


and I’m waiting for the sun

by ifyouresure



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, F/F, Post 2x08, Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 18:23:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9454496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifyouresure/pseuds/ifyouresure
Summary: Kara doesn’t tell her about the hologram of Alura, about the spy beacon she keeps hidden in her night stand, perpetually glowing, waiting for the touch of its twin, but she says, “Sometimes, I talk to them. My mother and her sister – my aunt. Just about my day, my job, my friends and family. It’s ...”“Cathartic,” Lena supplies. Kara was going to say ‘comforting’, but doesn’t correct her. “Sometimes,” Lena whispers, “I talk to Lex.”(Much later, Kara will think of Lex, still alive, sitting in maximum security, and wonder what Lena meant.)orA lot can happen in the space of a year; Kara and Lena know this better than most.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Slipping this in one day after the show came back from hiatus, because I can’t finish things on time.
> 
> You don’t set out to reimagine the conclusion of a season that hasn’t concluded, and yet.

“Kara! You must be freezing! You didn’t have to wait outside.”

In the early evening air, the car purrs silently, idling at the curb in front of the restaurant, Lena’s driver waiting for them to enter. Kara’s eyelids flutter when Lena places a hand on her arm.

Illuminated by the bright lights of the boutique across the street, Lena is wrapped in gold: the light highlights her hair, the soft edges of her coat; it seeps into the skin of her face and neck, catches in her eyes. Kara stares at Lena for a long few seconds, their breaths condensing in white clouds of smoke between them. The last crest of sun disappears behind the horizon; in a daze, Kara looks down at herself, before breaking out into a slow smile. “Oh! I forgot to take out my winter jacket. It gets colder in National City, doesn’t it?”

Lena looks at her curiously. “Aren’t you cold?” She takes Kara by the hand, pulling her into the restaurant. “Or not,” she amends as they move inside, bringing her other hand up to clutch Kara’s fingers, laughing.

In the cramped little doorway before the waiting area, Lena’s cheeks are flushed bright red from the cold, her dark hair staticky where it clings to her scarf. Her hands must be cold, cupped around Kara’s. Kara smiles again, shrugging. “Nope. Toasty warm.”

The maitre d’ greets Lena by name before leading them to a table in the back of the restaurant that affords them some privacy. Each table in the dining area lies under its own light fixture; when they sit down, the soft circle of light the lamp throws settles over them like another layer of protection.

Kara lets Lena choose the wine, reading the menu while Lena suggests different dishes to her. She’s clearly been here before: her posture is relaxed when the waiter takes their wine order and asks if Lena will be having her usual this evening, and he flushes a little when she smiles at him and says, “Yes, that would be lovely, thank you, Malcolm.” When she catches Kara’s eye after he leaves, she directs the smile at Kara instead, and it turns gentle at the corners of her mouth.

They exchange pleasantries while drinking the wine Lena chose, discussing CatCo and L-Corp. Lena listens to everything Kara says with rapt attention, intent and focused even through Kara’s rambling account of a disagreement with Snapper she had at work. After their food arrives and Kara groans at the first bite of her steak—Lena laughs only a little at Kara’s expense, quickly settling on an amused smirk—they lapse into comfortable silence, their cutlery clinking quietly against their plates. It’s Lena who speaks again first.

“How was your trip to Metropolis?”

A bite of food lodges itself somewhere in Kara’s throat in her effort to push everything in her mouth down in one big swallow. “My trip to M-Metr—oh, my trip to Metropolis!” she stutters out. “The trip after Thanksgiving, the trip I just got back from,  _that_  trip, uhm.”

Lena looks at her with concern. “Kara? Are you all right? I didn’t ruin your plans too much, did I?”

“Oh, Lena. No, no, you didn’t ruin anything.” Kara purses her lips. Her tongue curls bitterly around the lies climbing her throat like acid. “I’m sorry, I ... I tried to get back as soon as I could when I heard the news, and my phone—”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Lena says, smiling, though it’s a restrained thing. “I’m happy you came back for me at all, it—it was unexpected. It’s been a lonely week for me here, with my only friend in National City out of town.” Lena grins; the absence of her mother goes without saying. Kara allows her the veneer, for a moment.

“I am so sorry about your mom, Lena.” The smile on Lena’s face doesn’t falter much, but it becomes close-lipped, and Kara misses her openness, aches for it. Lena doesn’t ask about the article Kara interviewed her for last, and Kara doesn’t bring it up.

“Yes, well, she was never much of a mother, not to me,” Lena replies, flippant, chin propped up on her fist; the line of her neck curves beautifully into her profile when she looks away. “Anyway,” Lena rushes on before Kara can get another word in, “L-Corp’s holiday party this year should be an interesting affair.”

“Oh, right, the press room was ...” Kara pauses awkwardly, knife and fork stilling in her hands. “Discussing it.”

Lena raises a single eyebrow. “I’m sure. Will CatCo’s newest reporter be attending?”

Kara shakes her head. “Snapper didn’t put me on the story.”

“But you must come! Of course you’re invited.” Lena drops her fork to reach across the table, grasping Kara’s hand with hers when she extends it. “Please say you’ll come, you’ll be saving me from a long night of listening to snide old men and their insincere condolences.”

“I ...” Lena’s hand has heated up in the restaurant, and it’s warm now in hers. “Okay,” Kara says, smiling.

Lena’s breath of relief is subtle, unnoticeable to the untrained ear, and her shoulders relax just slightly. She smiles beautifully, teeth white behind her lips. “It’s settled, then. I’m afraid I won’t be able to pick you up in person, but I’ll send a car for you.” Lena hesitates, suddenly unsure. She shuffles a little in her seat, considering. “Thank you,” she says finally, “for agreeing to come.”

“Of course! I’m always here if you need me,” Kara says brightly, waiting for Lena to let go of her hand before resuming her meal.

The table is cool on her wrist. Lena gives Kara’s hand a minuscule squeeze, just a brief flexing of her fingers, before relinquishing her hold. She goes for her drink instead, looking at Kara over the rim of her wine glass, almost shy. Kara just catches the corner of her mouth raising before it disappears behind her glass. “Yes,” she says softly, after a moment, “you are.”

-

Lena is in her office when Kara flies by the L-Corp building later, after the two of them part ways at the restaurant with a hug and a kiss on Kara’s cheek that leaves her frozen in the middle of the sidewalk, long after Lena’s car has driven off.

She lands soundlessly on the balcony; Lena doesn’t look up from her work. In the chair at her desk, she cuts a stunning figure, imposing in the beautiful black dress she was wearing at dinner where before she was warm, inviting. When she swivels in her seat, sipping from a glass of whiskey, she catches a glimpse of Kara, before turning away again.

“Are you going to stand outside all night, Supergirl?” she says, quiet, certain that Kara will hear her – she does, even the smile in her voice.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Luthor. I was just stopping by to check on you,” Kara murmurs as she steps in, pulling the balcony door closed behind her before a breeze can steal its way in.

Lena hums. “From my balcony?” She turns away from her laptop to smirk up at Kara, shivering once. Kara can’t tell if it’s just for show; she can’t personally feel the cold, not with her cape draped around her and the sun beneath her skin.

If she liked, she could read the display on the laptop beside Lena. Instead, she blushes.

“I didn’t want to interrupt,” Kara mumbles, bracing her fists against her hips for something to do.

“Well, we all deserve a break now and again, don’t we, Supergirl?” That stops Kara in her tracks.

While she’d been on Earth One, J’onn had posed as Supergirl like he had in Cat’s office all that time ago, had even made a public appearance to thank Lena in person.

Kara doesn’t say anything, thinks to answer Lena a little too late, and when Lena looks up at her sharply, she schools the frown on her face, expression carefully impassive.

Lena laughs to herself quietly, taking another sip of her drink. She lets whatever she’s hinting at go. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this particular check-in?”

Kara moves eagerly into the room, letting her stance open up, smile genuine on her face. “I just wanted to say thank you again.”  _For the first time_. “In private.”

Lena’s grip on her glass tightens minutely, the tendons stretching under her skin. “Yes, well ...” she says, an echo of her words from earlier that evening, though now she seems to have trouble conjuring them. “It was my duty to the city, I’m sure anyone—”

“Not anyone,” Kara interrupts. Lena goes silent.

L-Corp is empty at this time of night, except for the security guards making their rounds and a few employees scattered among the floors. To Kara, the keyboard clacking under Jess’s fingers at the desk outside is loud, though she imagines Lena doesn’t hear much of anything, not the cars bustling in the streets below, nor the circuitry whirring in her laptop and the beat of every heart in the building. “I had a chance to examine the virus,” Lena says after a while, and her voice is clear, direct, paving a consonant path through the din in Kara’s ears where the sounds meet. “It didn’t look as though it was designed to target Kryptonians.”

“You’re right,” Kara says, subdued now, wringing her hands. “You’re exactly right, it was designed to avoid Kryptonian DNA, because ...” Kara takes a deep breath. “Because my father was the one who designed it.” Lena’s heartbeat speeds up a tick. “Which is why I, more than anyone, owe you my gratitude. So thank you. Thank you for ensuring it could not succeed.”

Lena stares. Her breath hitches just briefly, another note of sound among the others, before she brings a hand to her face, covering her mouth. Her eyes are wide, distressed. The ensuing silence is heavy.

“I am sorry that it meant the incarceration of your mother,” Kara apologizes for the second time that day, taking a step closer.

Lena composes herself before responding, her jaw working; the hand drops from her face slowly, the line of her mouth grim. “It was unavoidable,” she says. Then, quietly: “They deserve to be there.”

“Still, she was your family,” Kara implores softly. “It can’t have been easy.”

The right side of Lena’s face is blue in the glow of her laptop, the other warm and coppery. Her mouth twists. “No, I suppose it wasn’t,” she relents. “The price of saving a city – it never is. I’m sure you understand, Supergirl.”

Kara breathes in sharply.

-

Lena does not invite Supergirl to her holiday party; she isn’t really expecting any kind of danger this time, and she doesn’t presume Supergirl can take the time out of her schedule.

Kara does quick sweeps around the party venue anyway, when she gets the chance—when Lena is not at her side, not laughing and dancing the night away with her, not looking for her over the shoulders of other guests—purposely passing windows directly in Lena’s line of sight to remind her she’s there, listening keenly for the steady beat of Lena’s heart.

When Kara thinks of her first meeting with Lena, she remembers two versions of her:

First, there is Lena Luthor, CEO of international conglomerate LuthorCorp—now L-Corp—with sharp eyeliner framing green eyes and perfect lipstick framing an even sharper smile, sitting on a throne she strong-armed from her mother, surrounded by the evidence of her power.

Then, there is Lena, angry and  _scared_ , her heart loud and urgent in her chest, staring at the smoking dashboard of the helicopter she could have died in. There is Lena, her bottom lip pale pink beneath her teeth, her mascara stippling under her eyes, and a lost look on her face that, in hindsight, Kara thinks might have been the beginnings of a suspicion that would sever the last fragile thread that remained between her and her brother; Lena, whose hands tremble as Kara pulls them away to unbuckle her seatbelt for her.

Kara sometimes still has difficulty reconciling the two sides of Lena, remembering that they are two parts of a whole.

Lena doesn’t know to try with Kara.

-

“How many craters do you think you’ve left in the floor by landing too hard?”

Kara freezes, still crouched halfway to the ground. Her hair flops into her face. “I—” She straightens and shakes it out. “What?”

“Landing,” Alex says again, unpacking boxes of take-out. “How many times do you think you’ve damaged the floor by landing too hard?”

Still standing just in front of the threshold of Alex’s balcony, Kara blinks. She looks down at her booted feet which are, thankfully, set firmly on top of Alex’s unblemished hardwood floor. She changes out of her supersuit and into pyjamas in a flash, settling on the couch beside Alex before answering. “Probably about as many times as you’ve disobeyed direct orders from J’onn to rush onto a scene.”

Alex laughs. “Hey!” she says in a serious voice, “we’re discussing your shortcomings here.” Kara rolls her eyes before mumbling something out of the corner of her mouth. The movie playing on Alex’s flat screen drowns out her voice. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I said, two-hundred and seventy,” Kara mumbles. She explains before Alex can ask. “I make sure to ask Agent Johnson in remediation to reimburse for Supergirl-related damages. He told me we were up to two-hundred and seventy after that break-in two days ago.”

Alex stares at her. “God, you’re such a hero,” she says, shaking her head fondly.

Kara smiles sheepishly, pulling a tray of potstickers into her lap. “Why the question, anyway?”

“Winn,” Alex says by way of explanation. She grabs her own carton of food and turns to watch the movie, satisfied with Kara’s answer.

Kara laughs. “He’d get along with Cisco and Caitlin. They debate that sort of stuff all the time.”

Alex hums absentmindedly. “The engineers you met from the other Earth when you left without telling me.”

A potsticker pauses on its way to Kara’s mouth. She pouts. “I said I was sorry! It was urgent, and by the time I remembered, it was too late.” Alex hums faintly, unconvinced. “I tried calling, but the multiverse thing is weird, there was hardly any point since it was a whole different universe and all, and the call just ended up going through to—” She stops speaking. Her heart jumps into her throat.

Alex doesn’t notice, focused on the movie—they’ve started marathoning Star Wars for the thousandth time, because Alex enjoys it, and it reminds Kara of mostly fond memories from her childhood—and only vaguely listening to Kara, not until the silence stretches. She doesn’t hear the tail-end of Kara’s rambling. “Kara? You know I’m not mad, right? Well, not anymore.”

Kara takes a deep breath, harsh and unsteady, and stuffs her hands between her thighs to hide the way they’re shaking. “I know. It’s nothing.” Alex frowns, setting her food down.

“Kara.” She goes to pause the movie, but Kara stills her hand. Immediately, Alex’s fingers wrap around hers tightly, and Kara swallows, pushing down the ticklish feeling growing in her throat, hoping Alex won’t notice. But she does, of course she does, and she opens her mouth, is about to say something when Kara stops her.

“Really, it’s nothing,” she says. A lie. “I’m just tired.” The truth. “Let’s watch the movie?”

Alex’s gaze flickers to the screen and back. “Okay,” she says slowly. She tries to catch Kara’s eye and gives her a look that clearly says  _we’re coming back to this later_  and  _I’m not letting this go_ , and Kara tries very hard not to cry.

Except to go to the washroom or grab the ice cream in the fridge, Alex does not let go of her hand for the rest of the night.

-

On Earth One, Alexandra Danvers is a doctor.

Kara knows this, because when she absentmindedly taps her earpiece to call Alex’s personal number, she gets sent to a cheerful voicemail that tells her in a very familiar voice that she has reached the phone of a Dr. Danvers, who is busy at the moment and can’t pick up the phone, and to please leave a message after the tone.

Alex is never too busy to pick up a call from Kara. This Alex is.

After some internet-sleuthing—which mostly consists of a quick Facebook search—Kara finds Dr. Alexandra Danvers, who walks her dog in the mornings and enjoys running marathons and kickboxing. Alexandra likes a good adventure: she travels when her job permits, has eaten pasta in Italy, sipped Mai Tais in Hawaii, and loves to get lunch from a little food truck in Chicago when she’s in the area – somehow, this last detail is the worst. Only her close friends call her Alex. On this Earth, Kara is not one of them.

In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a Kara in any of Alexandra’s—and it feels weird to think of her as Alexandra, but even weirder to think of her as Alex, not when  _her_  Alex is thirty-seven Earths away and, oh Rao, probably worried sick about her—peripheral social circles. As far as Kara can tell, Alexandra Danvers has led a perfectly normal life so far. Alexandra Danvers is a single child. Alexandra Danvers has a father. Alexandra Danvers didn’t spiral in college, aced her MCAT, and went on to attend medical school in a different state.

Alexandra Danvers didn’t have Kara to ruin all of that for her, and that makes Kara feel so incredibly  _guilty_ : to see the extent of Alex’s joy, to see Alex prosper in a universe where Kara isn’t there to change that for her, and it makes her feel even worse, seeing Alex so wonderfully content and actually feeling  _bad_  about it. Kara should be happy for her, but she isn’t.

And it’s terrible, and selfish, and so, so despicable, but the worst part of it all is that this is a version of Alex who doesn’t feel her absence, who doesn’t  _know_  to miss someone who will never matter to her.

Here’s the thing: Supergirl doesn’t exist on Earth One, or else Barry would have asked for her help when the aliens rained down on it.

Kara doesn’t know whether that’s because she never made it to Earth, or because this Earth’s Kara didn’t have Alex, whose life was in danger, to inspire anything  _super_  out of her.

-

Even armed with the best lawyers money can buy and friends in high places, Lillian Luthor is remanded without bail.

One of the reporters that attended L-Corp’s holiday party says something to Snapper that convinces him to put Kara on every new story involving Lena and L-Corp; he sends her a not-very-passive-aggressive email about how she should learn to take advantage of her relationships with powerful people if she’s ever going to get anywhere, with the message hidden somewhere between two very uncreative insults that would disappoint Cat— _Kara_  is disappointed—that she’s to follow up with any updates from now on.

The judge appointed to Lillian’s case is notoriously anti-alien. Cadmus was mostly hidden as an organization before the last few months and, in the shadow of Lex’s own incarceration, Lillian, though a household name in higher circles, is fairly new to the citizens of National City. It’s the Luthor name that’s making headlines.

“Ms. Danvers is here for your two o’clock, Ms. Luthor.”

“Kara!” Lena says brightly, “please, sit. Thank you, Jess.” Jess nods before closing the door behind her.

“Lena, hi.” Kara takes the seat in front of Lena’s desk, flipping to a fresh page in her notepad.

“What can I do for you today?” Lena’s eyes flicker down to her hands, and her smile drops a little. “Business as usual?”

“I—yes,” Kara says, pulling her seat forward a little, “but we’re still on for lunch on Thursday, right? I was going to bring take-out from the new restaurant on Civic and Church?”

Lena responds after a beat. The smile blossoms once again on her face. “Yes, of course. What are we interviewing for today?”

“Your mother,” Kara answers.

“A popular topic between us.”

Kara blushes, but doesn’t protest. “I’m sure you heard that she’s being held without bail.” Lena nods. “Then I’m sure you’ve also seen the controversy her case has been drumming up regarding alien rights.”

Lena hums. “Yes, I’ve been following the news.”

“The Tribune is interested in what you have to say about the argument that no human lives were endangered on Thanksgiving last year, and therefore no crime was committed.”

“I’m not sure that there’s much of anything  _to_  say,” Lena replies. “My mother conspired to wipe out the entire population of aliens in National City. The Alien Amnesty Act guarantees those aliens the same rights as any human citizen.”

“So you believe she should be punished in the same way she might be if she had endangered the lives of the humans in National City instead?”

Lena frowns. “I believe that she should receive the punishment that fits her crime, as the law dictates. I am not my mother or my brother, Kara.”

Kara grimaces, looking down at the notes Snapper sent her with, the angle she’s examining. “No, but L-Corp’s move to frontline alien detection efforts has fueled doubts regarding where you stand on the issue.”

Lena glowers at her for a moment, then sighs. “Yes, I’ve seen the discussions.” She pauses to think before continuing, fingers tapping on the arm of her chair. “Lucky you, Ms. Danvers,” she says, “two exclusives in one day. Having reviewed the consequences of such a device being made readily available to the public, after much consideration, L-Corp has decided to pause development on the alien detection device until we find ways in which it can help government organizations,” Lena raises an eyebrow, “such as the FBI, protect citizens and aliens alike.”

Kara is momentarily speechless. “That’s—wow, that’s huge news,” she mutters, scribbling notes down. “What exactly changed your mind?”

“Besides recent events and my mother’s attempt at mass genocide?” Lena leans forward on her elbows; the dangly necklace she’s wearing skitters quietly against the surface of her desk. “Public opinion.

“And no, not the pro-alien public that’s watching my every move, waiting for me to make a mistake – to prove I’m just another Luthor,” Lena says when Kara makes a face, “but the anti-alien public. The amount of vitriol I’ve come across is horrifying, and I have had my fair share of it. With states across the country pushing to pass bills that will allow institutions to demand verification of human status before providing services, or even allow them to out citizens as aliens, I can no longer support the device and its current intended use.” She smiles crookedly. “You were right. It would encourage persecution, oppression – two things I had not seriously considered the repercussions of before now.”

Kara looks up from her notepad. “So you won’t be investing in any more alien-related projects in the future?”

“I can’t promise that,” Lena says. “L-Corp is, after all, in the business of making money. However, we will be reassessing existing projects, looking for ways in which they can be abused, especially those from the days of LuthorCorp, and L-Corp will redirect its efforts to protect and serve the Earth and its people, including aliens.”

“Wow,” Kara says again, rapping her pen against her notepad. “That’s a pretty big step in a very different direction.” She frowns. “Even from where L-Corp stands now. For the most part, the company has remained neutral on that front.”

“Yes. In future endeavours, L-Corp will strive to be more proactive.” She pauses. “In your books, that’s a cause to celebrate.”

“You’re right,” Kara says slowly. “I’m just trying to understand the change of heart. It isn’t public opinion again?”

Lena looks at her, confused. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, Kara. Don’t you think aliens have suffered enough by now?”

“Yes, of course,” Kara says, an inkling of an idea forming in her head, “but you say that as if you and L-Corp have had anything to do with that.”

“I won’t pretend I was ever a huge advocate for aliens – I was very much raised with the opposite sentiment growing up. LuthorCorp was largely moderate in the past, and then it became detrimental to the movement. That shouldn’t stop L-Corp from supporting alien rights now, from trying to right the wrongs that have been committed against aliens.” Lena crosses her legs, leaning away a little from her desk. “I am not my mother or my brother,” she says again.

“No, you’re not,” Kara replies, “but you’ve taken on the burden of reversing their misdeeds as if you are.”

Lena stares for a moment. She smiles wryly. “Transferral.  _Inheritance_. They committed unspeakable crimes against this city, this planet. Wouldn’t you say it’s my duty to reverse them?”

Kara purses her lips. Thinks of Non, and the sacrifice she made for Earth, unmotivated by the familial connection between them, but having everything to do with Alex – with Kal-El and Eliza and J’onn, and every other shining light on this planet. “No,” she says again, firmer this time. “No, I wouldn’t. I do believe we all have a responsibility to try to conserve and protect the Earth where possible, but I don’t think any one person should try to shoulder that responsibility alone, especially not for some—some crusade to redeem someone else’s mistakes.”

Lena doesn’t move. Her dark lips are parted slightly, her gaze unrelenting, and Kara thinks this might be the most undone Lena has ever appeared in front of her – Kara Danvers, and not Supergirl. It’s unnerving; Kara has to stop herself from shuffling anxiously in her seat, from speaking another word and reaching out.

After a moment, Lena’s mouth curls into a smile Kara has never seen before: it’s wretched and beautiful, and her eyebrows curve just upwards in the middle. She looks so very  _sad_ , and Lena sounds tired when she says, “This is where we disagree.” She looks away.

The conversation has ended, the interview long before that; Kara has a hundred things she wants to say, a hundred things she wants to  _do_ , but she smiles politely instead, putting away her pen and notepad. “Thank you for your time, Lena.”

For her part, Lena doesn’t seem to have composed herself yet. “Yes, I—I’m happy to have you at any time, Kara.” She looks almost lost, stormy-eyed and solemn, and Kara  _aches_ , considering staying for just an instant; when she reaches forward to shake hands with Lena, she grasps Lena’s in both of hers.

“Take care.”

-

“You’re distracted today.”

“What are you—”

“Don’t worry,” Alex says, “this is a private line. Winn and J’onn can’t hear.”

“Sort of busy right now, Alex,” Kara yells, plunging headfirst into the manhole the alien she’s chasing disappeared down.

“I know,” Alex says. “And I wouldn’t normally force you to talk to me like this when something is clearly bothering you, but now it’s affecting your work, and,” she makes a frustrated little noise, “you’re not being  _safe_.”

“Indestructible, remember?” Kara jokes, rocketing through the sewers, before tearing up. “Rao, it smells terrible down here.”

Kara can practically hear Alex’s eye-roll. “Yeah, yeah,” she grumbles fondly, “but I worry, you know?”

“I know,” Kara says quietly. They don’t speak while Kara apprehends the alien and passes it off to a team of DEO agents standing by. She flies off, scanning the city for more threats.

“You’ve been missing a lot of movie nights recently,” Alex says finally.

“I told you, Snapper has been keeping me really busy, and with Lillian Luthor’s trial—”

“I remember.” Alex sighs, the sound a little tinny in Kara’s ear. “You’ve been avoiding me. You have,” she says over Kara’s protests. “Ever since you came back from Earth One. I told you, I’m not mad, I promise I’m really not. I was worried, and I’m just glad you’re safe.” Kara chews on her lip to stop herself from responding, from saying she knows and  _that’s the problem_.

“Is it dad?” Alex whispers. “Did something—”

“No!” Kara drops a couple feet in the air before righting herself. “No, you would be the first to know if something happened. I would tell you right away, even if J’onn told me not to.”

Alex breathes out shakily. “Then is it Maggie?” Kara doesn’t answer. “Kara? Is it Maggie?”

“Pileup on the 305 freeway, Kara,” Winn says on the other line. Kara blasts off.

After sorting out the mess of cars on the freeway and pulling the injured passengers out to be loaded into ambulances, Kara flies back up into the sky, higher and higher, until the air is so cold she can feel it. She takes a deep breath.

“It isn’t Maggie,” she says, listening to Alex’s sharp intake of breath. “It isn’t, I promise it isn’t anything like that, and I— _I’m sorry_  I made you feel like it could ever be that.”

“Then what is it?” Alex asks. “Because this is—it’s killing me. Please just ... tell me what I did.”

“Alex,” Kara says, alarmed. “You didn’t do anything. Why would you think that?”

“It just—it feels a lot like it did after I—after Astra—” She doesn’t finish.

Kara purses her lips, because it’s been months and months since Astra died, but it still hurts, still aches in the place in her chest where Krypton and her parents and Kal-El glow. “No,” she says, voice rough. “Alex, no, you didn’t do anything at all. It’s just—it’s—”

“I swear to god, if you say it’s nothing, I will fly up there in your pod and come get you myself,” Alex mumbles wetly.

Kara bursts into startled laughter. “No, it’s just—it’s about the other Earth.”

A second passes, two, three. “Okay. What about the other Earth?”

“I went in not knowing what I was going to see,” Kara explains, and it all starts to come out in a rush, now that she’s finally talking about it. “Winn and Barry talked a little about the multiverse the last time he came over, and Barry said our world wasn’t all that different from his, but ...” Kara sighs. “It was so similar, Alex. Almost exactly the same.”

Alex makes a little noise over the communication line, her shoes almost silent on the cement floor, and Kara imagines her shifting her weight, taking a few steps away from Winn and the other agents. “Okay,” she says again.

“I told you why Barry came over to ask for my help.”

“Aliens arrived on his Earth, and he needed your help fighting them.”

“Right. He had to come to our Earth to ask for my help.” Alex doesn’t say anything. “Alex, don’t you see? I’m not there.  _I’m not there_. Almost everything was the same, you were there, Eliza and—” Kara pushes down the bile in her throat that rises at the thought of his name, “—Jeremiah, Winn and James, but I wasn’t!” Her eyes sting, and her voice goes hoarse. “I wasn’t. Besides the invaders, there was no evidence of aliens on the other Earth. No DEO, no Superman, no Supergirl. Don’t you get it?”

“Oh,” Alex says.

“Yes,” Kara says, nodding all alone up in the sky.

“ _Oh_ ,” Alex says softly, realization colouring her voice.

“Yes!” Kara shouts, tears welling up in her eyes.

“You’re saying that Krypton could still be alive in that universe. That your family could still be alive. That you—that you could be up there with them.”

And Kara could cry, because of course, of  _course_  Alex had listened to all that, had considered the possibilities of an Earth where Kara doesn’t exist, where she and Supergirl and the DEO aren’t there to ruin it, and thought of Kara first. The way she always is. The way she’ll never stop doing.

Because that’s what Alex does on this Earth: she worries and worries about Kara, and never stops to think for herself.

“Yes,” Kara says, and she really is crying now, tears freezing in their tracks as they stream down her face. All of the energy and courage seeps from her limbs, and she sags under the burden of her lie, tired of keeping it up but unwilling to let its familiar weight go. “Yes, that’s exactly it, you’re right, I—” She chokes on her words, pressing her hand to her mouth hard to stifle her sobs.

“I am so sorry, Kara,” Alex says, and Kara cries harder; she does sound sorry, she sounds like she feels as awful as Kara does. “I’m so sorry you had to face that possibility again. I’m so sorry that—” and now Alex’s voice sounds wet and unsteady over the communication line, the way it had in the Black Mercy dream, “—that you had to come back to this reality.” She inhales, long and deep, collecting herself. “That being with me reminds you of what could have been.”

“ _No_ ,” Kara says, so vehemently that Alex goes completely silent. “That couldn’t be farther from the truth. You are—Alex, you are everything I could ever want in a sister and more. In a family. And I ...” Kara swallows thickly, and Rao, this is the problem and Alex doesn’t  _know_. “I wouldn’t trade you or this life for anything.”

She descends slowly, cape fluttering around her. “I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed and I let it get between us. I’m sorry.”

“Kara, you can take as long as you need. I want that, for you,” Alex says, so earnestly that Kara’s heart breaks. “Just promise you’ll always come and tell me about it after?”

The sky is clear when she tilts her head up to hold back her tears, blue and uninterrupted above her. “Yeah. Yeah, I will.” She clears her throat, the air in her lungs turning to crystals in front of her mouth. “So, we’re on for movie night, right? I still have everything queued up.”

“Yes,” Alex says, sounding so relieved that Kara feels awful all over again.

“And game night this week?”

Alex doesn’t answer for a moment, and Kara panics. “I’ve actually been meaning to ask you if I could invite Maggie to game night?” Alex says, shy.

Kara gasps loudly, falling from the sky like a meteor, and she flies as fast as she can without shattering any windows along the way, not stopping until she’s right in front of Alex and pulling her into a hug; the floor might crack a little under her feet.

Alex responds almost immediately, arms coming up to wrap around her tightly. The agents in the room continue working without batting an eye; even Winn resists the urge to watch them, turning studiously back to his computer.

“Of course you can invite Maggie,” Kara says, her voice muffled by Alex’s shoulder. “Nothing would make me happier.”

“Good. That’s good.” Kara feels her smile against her neck. “You know she’s a little scared of you?”

Kara pulls away, propping her fists up against her hips, chin up. “As she should be. I am very scary.” Her voice cracks.

Alex laughs and laughs and laughs.

-

Maggie fits seamlessly into their weekly ritual.

They don’t play in pairs anymore, because the addition makes them an odd number, but that’s sort of wonderful in its own way. Kara warms up to Maggie on the first game night she attends; she helps Kara win, if only to make sure that Alex loses, and Alex is just so much  _happier_  when she’s around. And, when Alex isn’t looking, Maggie looks at Alex so tenderly that Kara can hardly stand to watch.

Maggie has an easy smile and effortless charm that endear her to James and Winn almost immediately, and although Alex never defines her relationship with Maggie outright, they seem to know that there’s something between them, and James and Winn tease the two of them every chance they get.

On her fifth night at Kara’s, Kara says, “So I wanted to invite someone else to game night, and I just want to let you guys know so that it doesn’t come as a surprise next week.”

“Partners, yes!” Winn says, at the same time James says, “Who is it?” and Maggie peeks at Alex’s cards while she’s distracted.

“Lena,” Kara says, ignoring Alex’s stare and watching from the corner of her eye as Maggie casually taps her fingers against her temple. Alex has an awful hand.

“ _Luthor_?”

“No, James, the other Lena we know,” Kara jokes weakly. Winn laughs for her benefit.

“Don’t you think that’s dangerous?”

“I can’t think how.”

James looks quickly at Maggie, then back at Kara. Maggie notices, raising an eyebrow. “Kara—”

“Kara, can I talk to you in the kitchen for a second?” Alex says, getting up from the couch. Kara nods eagerly, following her to the other room.

Alex leans back against the kitchen island and says, “James is right, don’t you think that’s dangerous?”

Kara frowns. “You too? I mean, I get James. He’s wrong! But I get that he doesn’t trust the Luthors after Lex. I didn’t think you—”

“That’s not it. You’re just ... not very careful with your identity during game nights,” Alex says generously.

“What!” Kara says loudly. Winn and Maggie turn to look at them from the living room. “What!” she whispers. “I’m super careful. I mean, normal careful. But a lot. Very!”

Alex gives her an unimpressed look. “Last week you popped a bag of popcorn with your laser vision right in front of Maggie.”

“It wasn’t  _right_  in front of her. More like, my back was turned, and—don’t do the eyebrow thing—okay, it was pretty bad, but she let it go.”

“She did that time. Probably won’t happen a second time.”

“Would that be so bad?” Alex gapes at her. “She’s important, and I  _know_  she’s trustworthy. Plus, you said she was already a little suspicious.”

“That isn’t a good reason to share your secret identity!”

“It’s good enough for me – she’s my friend, and I want to.” Alex’s face flickers, and Kara catches it. “You’ve thought about it. You  _want_  to tell her.” Kara jumps up and down. “This has never happened before! She  _is_  important.”

Alex glares at her. “Fine, okay. She is. But Maggie’s good about this secret identity stuff. She knows enough aliens to know that it’s important, and she wouldn’t tell people. Lena is different.” Kara mumbles something. “Come again?”

“I said, maybe she isn’t.”

A second of silence passes. “Wow,” Alex says, running a hand through her hair. “Okay. That’s new.”

“What?” Alex raises an eyebrow at her. “No! No, that’s not what I meant. We’re—” Kara huffs, “—we’re not like that. But she’s my friend, and I care about her.”

“Why invite her now?”

Kara sighs. “Her mom’s trial starts that Friday, and she was telling me—” Kara lowers her voice, “—Supergirl me—that she isn’t going to go in unless she’s called to the stand, and I don’t want her to be alone when it starts. She’s probably going to stay up in her office all night and—”

“Whoa whoa, back up a minute. You talk to Lena as Supergirl?”

Kara freezes. “Uhm,” she says.

“Kara—” Alex begins.

“I know, I know. It isn’t safe. It was just because we’re both witnesses for the prosecution. Don’t worry, I won’t accidentally reveal myself.”

Alex crosses her arms. “And how do you know that?”

“She acts differently, around  _me_  me and Supergirl me,” Kara says. “It ... it’s easy to remember who I am when she’s talking to me.” She looks away. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I don’t mind if Maggie finds out about me, and I might not be ready to reveal myself to Lena yet, but I know I can trust her.”

Alex is silent for a moment, expression curious. “You know I just want what’s best for you.”

“I know,” Kara says.

Alex sighs, throwing up her hands. “Fine. If you’re sure, I’ll support you. It’s your secret to tell. I can deal with telling J’onn.”

Kara beams. “You’re the best.” She pulls Alex into a tight hug, before pulling her back into the living room.

“Everything all right?” Maggie asks, glancing at Kara before giving Alex a questioning look.

“We’re fine, just had something to help Kara with. Call.”

Winn folds first, then Maggie one round later, and Alex folds after Kara raises another time. After a back and forth, James stares Kara down, gaze flickering to his cards every so often. On the other couch, Kara catches both Maggie and Alex giving her the OK-sign; Alex turns to look at Maggie with a frown before she can hide the gesture.

Finally, James sighs, throwing his cards down on the table. “Fold.” Kara grins.

Lena arrives at eight the next week, after Kara invites her during their walk through the park a block down from L-Corp.

She hesitates before agreeing to come, looking for a moment like she’ll decline the offer.

“You don’t have anything else planned that night, do you?” Kara had asked.

“No,” Lena answered. She’d stared up at Kara then, considering her. “No, I don’t.”

Lena looks just as Kara often imagines her when she opens the door to her apartment: she’s still wearing her work clothes, a white, silk blouse on top of a tight skirt; there’s a smile on her red lips, and she’s just soft at the edges, her blouse flowing a little looser in one spot, just slightly undone in the way that she is after a long day at work and—

“You’re drenched!” Kara says. Lena is shivering on her doorstep, hair wet and tangled, her things dripping onto the floor. “Come inside, let’s get you changed into something dry.” She drags her through her apartment toward her room. “Introductions after!” she shouts, shooting down the smattering of greetings.

“Kara—” Alex gets out, before Kara makes it to her room.

“It was just a little drizzle,” Lena says when the door is closed behind them, teeth chattering. She notices the easel in the corner of the room, but politely averts her eyes. “I’ll be fine.” Kara throws her a look, holding her by the arms so that there’s less than a foot of space between them.

“You’re freezing,” Kara says, looking down at her and frowning, “you’re wet to the bone, and your shirt is completely see-through. You need to get out of those clothes.”

“Are you propositioning me, Ms. Danvers?” Lena says, voice silky smooth.

“Am I—” Kara looks up at the smirk on Lena’s face, the arch of her eyebrow. “No!” She lets go of Lena lightning-fast, turning away to rifle through her dresser, the tips of her ears turning red. Lena laughs warmly behind her, the sound delighted, and despite herself, Kara smiles.

“Here,” she says, handing Lena a sweater that’s loose on her and a pair of well-worn pants. “You can change in the bathroom and hang your clothes to dry. There are some clean towels in there, too.”

“Thank you.”

Lena goes still suddenly, holding Kara’s clothes in her hands, examining her closely, and her smirk disappears. There’s an odd look of concentration on her face. “Is something wrong?” Kara asks.

“No, I—” Lena shakes her head, before looking back at Kara curiously. “I’ve just noticed. I believe this is the first time I’ve seen you without your glasses on.”

“My glasses?” Kara asks, absentmindedly pushing them up, only to be met with empty air. She panics, fingers fluttering around her face. “My glasses!” She looks wildly around the room for them.

“Kara.” Kara stops using her x-ray vision to look into the living room, focusing back on Lena. Lena taps the top of her own head, and Kara reaches up for her glasses, perched on top of her head where she left them while she was heating up the coffee. She blushes, putting them on and fiddling with the arms, adjusting them as Lena watches her.

“I’ll just be waiting out here,” Kara mumbles after a pause. Lena takes pity on her, going to change without another word. Kara’s cheeks have returned to their normal temperature by the time she comes out of the bathroom, dry and bundled up in Kara’s clothes.

The others are breaking out the partner games when the two of them exit Kara’s room. They do quick introductions; Lena mostly knows everyone there already, Winn from her party and Maggie from the attack on L-Corp last Thanksgiving. Even James is a familiar face from various parties, though Lena knows him almost exclusively by the photography he did for the Daily Planet and, for all his reservations, James likes her almost instantly. In some ways, Lena is a little like Lucy—the version of herself she presents, at least—confident and self-assured, though a little reserved, and it’s reflected in the way he looks at her sometimes. He must miss Lucy; after stepping down as director, she’d stayed on as a legal advisor at the DEO, and the Alien Amnesty Act has kept her too busy to visit. Kara misses her, too.

“Ready to win?” Kara asks Lena, after they’ve split up into pairs, James with Winn and Maggie with Alex.

“No chance, Little Danvers.” Maggie grins at her. “No one’s helping you now.”

Lena turns out to be surprisingly good at all of the inane little games they play. “I played a lot of these when I was little,” she explains without expanding, and no one comments. They play the relationship game, and Maggie and Alex win only marginally; Kara didn’t know Lena was even listening when she told her half of these things about herself.

“Okay, this just isn’t fair,” Winn complains after losing a staring contest to Lena and everyone heckles him good-naturedly. “She’s got that intense stare thing going for her.”

“And she’s pretty and smart and good at games – too bad, Winn!” Kara says happily, slipping her glasses off. “Come on, Maggie and I are next!” Maggie shares a look with Alex over Kara’s shoulder.

“Good luck trying to win a staring contest against this one,” Winn says to Maggie. “She’s got eyes of steel.” Alex elbows him surreptitiously. Winn yelps not surreptitiously.

By the end of the night, Kara and Lena secure second place behind Maggie and Alex, and no secret identities are accidentally revealed. Winn and James leave first, then Maggie and Alex, arms wrapped around each other.

“They’re very sweet together,” Lena comments, following Kara back to her room to change again.

Kara smiles. “You could tell.”

“It would be hard to miss.” Lena comes out of the bathroom wearing the clothes she came in and they walk back out to the kitchen in silence. “I don’t want to overstay my welcome—”

“You could never.”

Lena laughs. “You know what I mean, Kara!” Her smile turns melancholy. “Thank you,” she says, “for inviting me. Truthfully, I knew today would be awful for me and ... you knew that, too, didn’t you?”

Kara hesitates, before nodding. “They have a senior reporter taking the lead on your mom’s case, but we’re collaborating on the story. I heard that her trial was going to start today.”

Lena looks down. “It was very kind of you to think of me,” she says. “You’ve saved me from a night otherwise spent ...” Lena chews on her lower lip. “To be honest, I’m not sure what I would have done. But this was all so lovely and—and normal, and ...” She struggles to come up with the words.

Kara second-guesses herself for a split second, before drawing Lena in for a hug; Lena’s arms come up to return it only a moment later. She breathes in and out slowly. “I didn’t want to be alone,” Lena confesses finally into her shoulder. “I haven’t left work early in months. For years and years, I’ve taken care of myself, made my own way, and yet ...” Her fists clench in the material of Kara’s shirt. “Isn’t that strange?”

“No,” Kara says. “Not at all.”

Lena’s perfume is soft and sweet at her neck, a woody scent with floral notes. “Thank you for making sure I wasn’t alone tonight,” she says after a while.

Kara nods, realizing belatedly that she isn’t wearing her glasses, and that she must have left them in the living room. “It’s nice to pretend things are normal once in a while, don’t you think?”

-

“Lena said you and Maggie are sweet together, by the way,” Kara says. “I guess she could tell.”

Alex hums. “Funny, Maggie said the exact same thing about the two of you.”

Kara splutters incoherently.

-

Lena is being kept at the DEO for her safety, thirty feet away from Supergirl and the group of agents discussing the threat on her life, and Kara cannot get hold of her at all.

It isn’t because her calls and messages aren’t going through, because she can hear Lena’s phone vibrating with notifications and, through the wall, she can see Lena staring at her phone every time Kara calls.

They had a lunch date scheduled for today; Jess had called her briefly to say Lena wouldn’t be able to meet her after all. Instead, Kara had flown up over the city to watch the black DEO vans steal Lena away after the attack on her office.

Right now, Lena is sitting alone in one of the briefing rooms branching off from the main lobby, anguish rolling off her in waves. Kara thinks back to the attack, tries to remember some detail she missed, some explanation for why Lena is so shaken this time, why she had been on the verge of tears when Supergirl came to save her. Lena is usually calm and collected in situations like this one, having built up a kind of awful tolerance to the attempts Lex periodically makes on her life.

Nothing in particular comes to mind; Kara only remembers crashing into Lena’s office and making eye contact for a fraction of a second, before throwing the attackers out back the way she came, watching from the corner of her eye as DEO agents ushered Lena out of the building.

 _I heard from Supergirl that there was an attack on your office! Please text me back when you can_ , Kara types out. She watches Lena look down at her phone and away, before doing a double-take, a fresh look of horror on her face. Kara frowns, confused.

“... expect Lillian Luthor to attack again,” she hears J’onn say.

“What?” Kara says, tuning back into the conversation. “What was that about Lena’s mom?”

Winn, standing across the table at J’onn’s side, winces. “Uhm,” he says.

“What is it?” Kara looks around at J’onn and Alex exchanging a look, before focusing again on him. “Winn?”

“I looked into the bank transactions of one of the assailants we identified,” he says finally. “A huge sum of money was wired into his account sometime in the last twenty-four hours.”

“Well, Lex had to pay them. There’s nothing out of the ordinary there.”

“Right,” Winn says, “except it wasn’t Lex who paid them.” The edge of the table between Kara’s thumbs and fingers creaks, and Winn stops speaking to watch the metal bend under her grip.

“It appears as though Lillian Luthor is making the most of the time she has left before being sent to prison for good,” J’onn finishes for him.

“Kara—” Kara spins away from the group before Alex can finish her sentence, making her way to the briefing room where Lena sits in a fraction of a second. She stops just before the door, taking a long breath to calm herself, feeling Alex’s eyes on her back all the while, before entering the room quietly.

Lena jumps anyway, quickly assuming a shaky smile. “Supergirl.”

“We  _will_  catch them,” Kara tells her, quiet still, but her skin is hot, her anger spreading like a wildfire underneath it.

Lena looks at her then, really looks at her. The smile on her face has long slipped away. “I have every confidence,” she says.

Kara nods once before leaving, closing the door behind her. Alex is still looking at her from where she was standing before; there’s a new understanding in her eyes. She sends Kara a sympathetic smile, before turning to ask Winn how they’re doing on tracking where the attackers went.

-

Kara brings breakfast—for five—and coffee—for three—in the morning.

From behind her desk, Jess looks at Kara in a way Kara associates with Supergirl and how people normally look at her when she’s in her supersuit. She thanks Kara profusely and, at the first taste of coffee, melts into her seat, before whispering that Lena will be waiting for her in the conference room – they haven’t had Lena’s office repaired yet. When she walks past Jess’s desk, Kara catches a glimpse of Lena’s schedule on her desktop monitor. Her day has been cleared completely, except for a note that reads Kara will be arriving with no specific time or reason for meeting.

Lena’s chair is turned completely toward the back wall and the room’s view of the city when Kara enters. The windows facing inward toward the rest of the floor have been dimmed, and Lena’s laptop isn’t open on the long table. She turns to smile at Kara, thanking her when Kara hands her a coffee, watching silently as Kara lays the food out in front of them before sitting down beside her. Kara waits patiently for Lena to speak.

“I read your article for the Tribune this morning,” she says. “The quote from Supergirl was a nice touch, as always. It set your article apart from the rest, the added perspective.”

“Thank you,” Kara says.

“I suppose the readers are bored by now, with Lex’s constant assassination attempts.” Lena waits for a moment, before sighing and looking down. “You and Supergirl are close.” Kara nods. “Then she must have told you that ...” Lena purses her lips, doesn’t finish.

“Yes,” Kara says.

Lena looks up. “Why didn’t you print it? Surely that would have been the exclusive of the year. ‘Lillian Luthor hires hit men to kill daughter, Lena Luthor, who turned her in’.” Lena laughs. “God, that really does sound awful.”

“I didn’t think it was my place to decide whether or not to release that information.” Lena stares. Kara rushes to explain. “What I mean is, I know what it’s like to have the details of your life picked apart. Not to the same extent yours has been—” oh, but she  _does_  know, “—but enough. I won’t print it if you don’t want me to.”

“And is that why you’re here?”

“No,” Kara says firmly. “I wouldn’t have even said anything if you hadn’t brought it up.” Kara places her hand on Lena’s knee. “I’m here because I wanted to make sure you were all right. Because I  _know_  you probably didn’t eat anything this morning,” she says, throwing a stern look at Lena, who looks appropriately chastened, “and because I thought you might like some company today. Officially, I have a family emergency.” Kara grins.

“A family emergency?” Lena looks at her oddly.

“Yes! I don’t think Snapper would have let me go for anything less.”

“Of course,” Lena says. The look on her face disappears as quickly as it appeared. “Thank you, for coming to check up on me. As always, you are ... the most wonderful friend.” Kara smiles.

They eat the food she brought, Lena in awe, as she so often is, of Kara’s pace and the sheer amount she eats. After a while, without warning, Lena says, “I do want you to print it.” Kara pauses mid-chew. “I think people should know what she’s capable of, what she’s willing to do to get what she wants. Anything that will help to have her incarcerated.”

“Are you sure?” Lena nods. Kara sends a quick text off to Snapper, before turning back to her. “Do you want to do this now?” She nods again, and Kara takes out her notepad.

Lena is practised at being interviewed, and this time is no different: she answers each question Kara asks her concisely, and Kara quickly gathers enough notes to write a comprehensive article. While she draws up a draft for Snapper, Lena sends her own emails to her publicist and L-Corp’s PR department.

Before sending the article, Kara asks Lena if she would like to read it over, and Lena, with the ghost of a smile on her lips, says, “I trust you will do us justice.” Kara sends the email.

“Do you know that I—” Lena says abruptly before stopping, sometime after the finished draft of Kara’s article has been sent off and her first article on the Tribune’s site has been updated accordingly. Kara gives her an encouraging nod. “I—feel awful sometimes, about what I did at Thanksgiving. I don’t regret it, but she was my mother. Even now, after yesterday, I ... I can’t help but feel the way I do about her, wishing she would feel the same.”

Kara doesn’t know this; Supergirl does, to some extent. “You love her,” she says.

“Yes,” Lena breathes out, sounding almost relieved, “I do. I have, so hopelessly, for years. She gave me a home, she and my father and Lex. And, sometimes, it was as if—as if she loved me, too. That was all I ever wanted, growing up. Not the money or the luxury it afforded me, but the love of my mother, my father’s approval, Lex’s confidence and companionship. I miss them desperately.” A look of profound longing overwhelms Lena’s face, and Kara’s heart aches at the familiarity of it, not for the first time remembering the vision the Black Mercy had presented her, and knowing with absolute certainty what it would show Lena.

Kara doesn’t tell her about the hologram of Alura, about the spy beacon she keeps hidden in her night stand, perpetually glowing, waiting for the touch of its twin, but she says, “Sometimes, I talk to them. My mother and her sister – my aunt. Just about my day, my job, my friends and family. It’s ...”

“Cathartic,” Lena supplies. Kara was going to say ‘comforting’, but doesn’t correct her. “Sometimes,” Lena whispers, “I talk to Lex.”

(Much later, Kara will think of Lex, still alive, sitting in maximum security, and wonder what Lena meant.)

-

Kara knows almost immediately that something’s wrong when the van comes tearing down the street toward them.

There’s no one around. Lena and Kara are walking a shortcut to L-Corp from Liberty that Kara showed Lena only last week. Hardly anyone goes here; Kara frequently takes off out of this backstreet to fly back to CatCo. Whoever the attackers are, they must have been watching Lena and decided this was the perfect place to strike. Kara goes cold at the thought.

The onslaught of bullets comes as a complete surprise. Normally—if this situation were normal at all—Kara might simply pluck them out of the air, but she panics, watching, as if in slow motion, as the bullets come for them, Lena’s face only just beginning to register what’s happened, and it’s all Kara can do to leap in front of her, curling around her as they fall to the ground. Kara sees the exact moment Lena realizes who she is and every subsequent expression on her face, the range of emotions from shock to nausea.

The van leaves as quickly as it came. Kara watches it careen away over her shoulder, holding Lena by the biceps.

“You’re all right,” Kara breathes out, mostly for her own benefit, “you’re all right.” She shakes violently, the bullets clinking together where they’ve gathered at her lower back. Lena stares at her wordlessly. “I ... I have to go catch them before they get away. I’m sorry. This isn’t how—how I ...”

“Kara,” Alex says in her ear, “there’s trouble on Liberty.”

Kara makes a frustrated noise, flashing out of her clothes and into her supersuit. “I’m sorry,” she says again, turning away. She flies off with one last look over her shoulder, leaving behind her bullet hole-ridden clothes and Lena, kneeling on the ground, a look of betrayal on her face.

-

The curtains in Lena’s office flutter, and when she looks up, Kara is standing by the bar, her back turned toward her. She isn’t wearing her supersuit—doesn’t quite know how Lena feels about it all, not yet—but her sweater is a deep, rich blue, and her back is straight, shoulders broad and proud.

Kara can hear Lena closing the lid of her laptop and getting up from her seat. “Thank you for coming,” she says. She moves to the bar and pours two fingers of whiskey into a crystal tumbler. Their shoulders brush; Kara inches carefully away from her. Lena tips the neck of the bottle at Kara, but she shakes her head, and Lena shrugs, taking a sip from her cup.

“You can take those off,” she says conversationally. Kara jumps. She looks up, and Lena’s eyes are sharp and curious on hers. She moves back to her desk, leaning back into the front of it and taking another sip from her drink.

Kara hesitates, before finally, finally, she turns around and reaches up to remove her glasses, folding them up carefully, one arm at a time, and places them into her back pocket. She doesn’t speak, letting Lena dictate the conversation.

Lena watches her the entire time, chin tucked into her shoulder. She puts down her glass, and looks away. “You really are her,” she says. “I mean, you did just come in through the balcony door, of course, but I see it now. It isn’t just the glasses, it’s ...” Lena laughs, waving a hand in her direction, “... your entire demeanour. You change, when you’re her.”

Kara presses her lips into a flat line, fighting the urge to look down, to let her shoulders curl inward.

“But then it makes perfect sense, and I think, I should have known.”

Lena looks up then, gaze intent on Kara’s surprised face. “The reporter with the heart of gold, champion of aliens, my only friend.” She crosses her arms over her stomach, and even as Kara flushes, she wonders if she is imagining the vulnerability that blankets Lena. “Honest, sincere, genuine.” She smiles, soft, sad, watches a finger run along the rim of her glass. “And so very determined to make sure I knew you don’t see me only as a Luthor. To make sure I ...” If Kara didn’t have super-hearing, was not so completely focused on her, she would not hear the way Lena breathes in deeply before she speaks again. “I should have known.”

“You couldn’t have,” Kara says at last, taking one step toward Lena’s desk, “hardly anyone does. And I wanted to tell you, I  _did_ , but—”

“It’s all right, Kara. I couldn’t be trusted.”

“No!” Kara shouts, rushing forward, before she stops abruptly, leaving two paces between them. She retracts her hands. “No, I do trust you. After everything, I trust you.”

Lena smiles again, but it’s dimmer than before. She resumes speaking, as though the conversation had never segued. “I knew why Supergirl might be so interested in me.” She laughs, and it’s an empty, hollow sound. “After all, I am a Luthor, in spite of my best efforts to make up for that, to eclipse it. What I didn’t know was why Kara Danvers, the green reporter at CatCo, would be. And now I know.”

“Lena,” Kara says, alarmed. “That isn’t true. You’re my friend! I hang out with you because I’m your friend, and I—” She falters. “—I like you.”

“Perhaps it isn’t the reason we are friends, but it is the reason you approached me,” Lena amends.

“That isn’t fair,” Kara says quietly. “You came to National City a year after I revealed myself. You do have a connection to Lex, you  _do_ , just like I have a connection to Superman. I understand that you’re trying to make a name for yourself outside of that—I understand better than anyone—and I have done my best to give you the benefit of the doubt, but that doesn’t erase your history, no more than it does mine.” Kara takes another step forward. “Maybe our first meeting was motivated by suspicion, but every meeting after,” Kara urges, and she thinks of the first time she saved Lena in that helicopter, hoping Lena is thinking of the same thing, “ _every_  meeting after was just me, wanting to know you, and thinking that you deserved to be known beyond your family. As just Lena.”

Kara bites her lip. “That was all I ever wanted. I knew you were different, the moment we met. That there was a part of you beyond the CEO of L-Corp, beyond your name and its reputation, a part of you that wasn’t what everyone else made you out to be. That was when I decided I wanted to get to know you.” Her mouth clamps shut.

“You ...” Lena clutches her neck, and Kara watches Lena’s jaw flex. “Here I thought I would come to National City to drag my way to the top, prove myself trustworthy. As quietly as I could, without too much fuss. Publicly, but cautiously. That was the plan, what I had prepared myself for. And now ...” She sighs, opens and closes her mouth once, twice, before turning to look at Kara. “My life has changed for having you in it.”

They stare at each other for a long moment. Kara’s lips part. She blinks furiously, turning away, and the blood drains from Lena’s face.

“Kara, I didn’t mean—”

“No,” Kara interrupts. “You’re right.” Lena protests again, but falls silent when Kara turns to smile at her. Kara moves further into the room, away from Lena and her balcony and the inviting night sky. The light fixtures in the office suffuse her in golden light, and she can only think of how  _wrong_  the colour is.

“There isn’t a single person in this city whose life I haven’t disrupted simply by existing, by being who I am. Believe me,” and here Kara laughs a little, “ _believe me_ , I know. I’ve seen how their lives panned out when I wasn’t there to change them, I’ve  _seen_  how happy and fulfilled my foster family, my own  _sister_ , are without me.” Kara doesn’t explain how, and Lena doesn’t ask. “And I can only believe Krypton exploded with me on it, or maybe it didn’t. Maybe I’m still there, with my own family. Maybe I’m on Earth, ruining the lives of another.”

“They’re happier, for having you in their lives,” Lena says with conviction, leaning forward. Kara almost smiles.

“Jeremiah, safe and sound? Alex and her father, Eliza and her husband – the three of them living their own lives the way they wanted?”

The look on Lena’s face betrays her. Her eyebrows draw together, and she scrunches her eyes shut tightly, as if trying to dispel the image of such a life, of a family who loves their daughter, who wants the best for her. “That—” she says unsurely, “—that isn’t just your influence. You aren’t the sole cause of his absence in their lives.”

“No,” Kara says, “maybe not, but I’m not there, and he is.” Lena has no reply for that. Kara moves on.

“Do you want to know something awful?” She looks up when she says this, looks straight into Lena’s eyes, and she hears the precise moment Lena stops breathing. “I don’t know if it’s worth it.”

Air rushes into Lena’s lungs fast, her chest expanding, before it catches there, an aborted breath. She falls back against her desk involuntarily and the tumbler on it wobbles, drops of golden liquor spilling around it; Kara doesn’t rush forward to steady it. She smiles, rueful, sad, and looks down, wrapping a hand around the back of her neck and bracing her elbow against her other hand. Suddenly, she feels small again, young, naive. “I don’t know if it’s worth it.

“On Krypton, I was just a child, powerless to do anything, while my mother wilfully ignored the cries of a dying planet and my father synthesized weapons of mass genocide. On Earth, I have ... I have the potential to  _be_  something, to influence the turn of events. I can save people, and I like doing it. I like the way it makes me feel, I like being of use, doing the right thing.”

Kara paces the room, her agitation belying her words. “Even though it was my parents’ decisions that gave me these powers,” she says, grip vice-like on her neck, “even though their mistakes led me here, even as I,” and here her voice turns vicious, “I  _resent_  them for that, I can’t help but be grateful for the opportunity they’ve afforded me, to do good. To  _be_  something. You can understand that, can’t you?” Kara asks desperately, and for a moment neither of them breathe, as if suspended, the freeze-frame of some strange movie: a Luthor and a Kryptonian standing in what once was the office of a man radically different from the both of them. Kara turns away.

“I love this planet,” she says. “And I like having friends, a family. I like having a sister who loves me, who takes care of and protects me, I—do you know how Supergirl came out?” Kara looks up expectantly.

Lena startles. She clears her throat, says, “You saved a plane.”

Kara smiles, soft this time, almost sweet. “I did. Did you know my sister was on it?” Lena shakes her head wordlessly, but Kara isn’t paying attention to her anymore; her eyes are glazed over in reminiscence and her hands flex, seeing and feeling things that Lena can’t, reliving an old memory. “Alex is an excellent agent – the best, even. She almost never used to lose her cool, not unless she thought I was in danger, and then, later, J’onn, Maggie ...” Kara’s eyes burn through Lena, but she isn’t looking at her. She’s looking far, far away, past National City and its lights, past the stars in the night sky, and then farther still; she can almost pretend the blurred outline of a faraway star is the glowing red halo of Rao. Then, she pulls her vision all the way back and catches a glimpse of Alex, settling in her apartment. She’ll be expecting Kara for movie night soon.

“But her heart was beating so fast on that plane,” Kara continues, “so loud, and I  _wasn’t_  going to let her die, too.” Her face twists with fury, and her eyes glow a cold blue. Crossed across her stomach, Lena’s hands begin to tremble a little, and Kara notices when she looks up, despairs at it. She calms down immediately, almost regretting her anger. “Not again,” Kara whispers. “Not when I could actually do something.” She doesn’t say anything else for a while, and in the space between them, Lena’s breathing is loud. When Kara speaks again, it’s in the quiet cadence of confession. “It wasn’t even the first plane crash in the area since I moved here.”

Kara’s hands drop to her sides and she paces the length of Lena’s office, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until she’s only a blur of muted blue. She stops suddenly, inches from Lena, close enough to touch. Lena jumps only a little, grasping the tumbler on her desk before it can spill again, bracing herself against it. Only now that they’re this close does Kara see the soft look of sympathy on Lena’s face, and Kara realizes she’s crying, becomes suddenly aware of the sensation of tears sliding down her cheeks, in the same way she sometimes notices the pain of a wound hours after receiving it.

“Isn’t that awful? To want a life on Earth when I don’t belong? To love it, to want to save it, even when my very existence endangers the people on it? To want to be a hero, but only when it’s convenient for me?” Kara is breathing hard now, almost frantic. “To want a family, even when they’d be happier without me, to—to want all of these things, even when the precondition is a dead planet, a dead civilization,  _my_  dead family?” A kind of anguish older than the both of them seeps into her voice. She looks to Lena then, desperate, pleading.

Lena’s eyes are shiny and tinted red, and Kara thinks wildly of the beautiful green seas on Krypton, of Rao’s light nestled in every living thing. “Oh Kara,” she says, and Kara latches onto the sound of her name in Lena’s voice, delicate and kind, as if she is something to be cherished, to be loved. “There isn’t anything you could have done for your planet, nor for your family. Nothing you could have done to change your circumstances and prevent the—” She pauses, chooses her next words carefully, “—loss of your culture. Do not punish yourself for wanting the only life you’ve known since.”

Lena reaches out hesitantly now, adjusts a strand of hair at Kara’s temple that was displaced when she took her glasses off. Her hand falls to curl carefully along the curve of Kara’s cheek. Her tears have dried up; she feels spent, exhausted, like the shadows in the office have drained the sunlight from her skin. “You don’t owe Krypton anything, Kara,” Lena says finally, quiet, gentle. 

Kara stares at her for a long time. She blinks, smiles, tilting her head curiously, and the motion causes her to lean into Lena’s touch.

“The same way you don’t owe Earth anything?”

A second later, Lena is alone in her office, the only indication that Kara had ever been there at all the fluttering papers on Lena’s desk, and her arm, frozen, reaching into empty air.

-

 _Where was I on the other Earth?_  Lena texts her. Then:  _Lex? My mother and father?_

_I can find out. Do you want to know?_

Lena doesn’t respond.

-

They don’t talk about it.

Game night goes on as usual. Nothing has really changed: Lena is more comfortable now, among Kara’s friends—Lillian’s trial has entered its second month in court—and if, sometimes, Lena notices Kara watching Alex with Maggie, a hopeful look in her eyes, she doesn’t mention it.

Once, Alex and Maggie beat them all so spectacularly at a game of charades that Alex plants a long kiss on Maggie that leaves her dazed and, without missing a beat, Winn shouts for them to get a room while everyone laughs, and it’s good.

Alex gets a call while they’re playing a game of Monopoly—Lena is incredible at it, whereas Kara is already nearly penniless—and she cuts a sharp look at Kara after she hangs up. Lena and Maggie watch them take a few steps away from the group.

“It was J’onn,” Alex says quietly. “Something about the protest heating up at the courthouse. There hasn’t been any evidence of alien activity yet, so it’s out of the DEO’s jurisdiction.”

“And the NCPD is ...”

“Already there, trying to contain the crowds.” Alex frowns. “J’onn has a bad feeling about this, something’s different.”

“Okay,” Kara says. “Okay, I’ll go check it out.”

Alex nods. “What are you going to tell Maggie and Lena?”

Kara shuffles on the spot. “Actually, Lena kind of knows already.”

“ _Lena knows_?” Alex whispers loudly. “How did that happen?”

“You know that drive-by a couple of weeks ago—” Kara begins sheepishly.

“You know what? Not now. You can tell me about it later. What are you going to do about Maggie—” Kara speeds away and into her room without warning, changing into her supersuit and coming back out again in a fraction of a second. “Oh.” Alex turns to look at the others, and Maggie is already staring wide-eyed back at her.

“Uhm.”

“I need to go do something,” Kara says to the room at large, while James and Winn gape at her. “You guys keep playing! Lena can play my turn for me,” she jokes, before jumping out the window.

“What is it?” she hears Lena ask as she flies off, and Alex turns the television on.

There are sirens blaring down in the streets and Kara watches a stream of police cruisers weaving through the traffic, all heading in the direction of the courthouse.

“Supergirl,” a voice says in her ear, just as she reaches the protest. A line of officers clearly separates the crowd into two, one pro- and one anti-alien.

“J’onn! What’s going on? I’ve been by the courthouse before, these were peaceful crowds.”

“I don’t know,” he says, agitated. “There are DEO agents on standby in case of an emergency, but something’s changed. Be careful.”

The crowds surge toward each other, the police unable to keep them at bay, and Kara swoops forward to help just as a chorus of screams starts up to her right. A spot in the crowd opens up, and Kara catches the glint of metal as one of two hooded figures in the middle of it raises an alien gun. She dives in front of the ray it shoots, red and oddly familiar, bracing for its effects, but nothing happens.

Kara rushes forward, knocking the gun out of the attacker’s hands. She only catches sight of his face when his hood slips, and Kara freezes, unable to move.

“Jeremiah.”

“Supergirl! What’s happening? Kara!” J’onn yells in her ear. He shouts indistinctly at someone on his end.

“I—”

More screams erupt from the crowd, and Kara looks up just in time to watch a demonstrator collapse after being hit by a beam of heat vision, coming from the other figure who she recognizes now as Hank Henshaw. A team of DEO agents bursts out into the clearing, charging at Hank, but Kara hardly notices, focused on Jeremiah. She looks at him, confusion colouring her voice.

“Jeremiah, what are you—what are you doing?”

“Kara—” he says.

Several beams of heat vision hit her squarely in the chest, and she’s knocked off her feet, pain flaring in her torso. “It’s time to go,” she hears Hank growl, the sound muffled and unclear in her ears, suddenly appearing at Jeremiah’s side. Blearily, she watches Hank grab him before they take off, and she passes out.

When Kara wakes up a few hours later, it’s to the buzz of the sun lamps around her and Alex at her bedside.

“Kara,” she says, voice heavy with relief. “We saw you get shot down on the news. What happened?”

“Alex,” Kara says.

“The others are worried sick. J’onn is outside with them right now,” Alex continues, apparently not hearing her. “I can go get them—”

“Alex, it’s Jeremiah.”

Alex stops mid-stride, and it’s as if she deflates. Her booted foot falls back to the ground with a thump. When she turns back around, her eyes are downcast, shoulders hunched. “J’onn said he heard you call his name,” she says quietly, “and some of the agents at the courthouse recognized him.”

“Alex, he ... he shot at the crowd.”

Kara watches Alex’s jaw clench. “I saw. They left the gun behind and Winn analyzed it. It isn’t alien, it was just an imitation, and it ...” She purses her lips. “It’s infused with the Medusa virus.”

“That’s why it didn’t hurt me.” Alex nods. “But why would they ...” Kara tries to sit up, only to lie back down with a hiss. Alex rushes to her bedside, hands fluttering at her chest. Kara stills them in hers, breathing hard. “Why would they disguise it as an alien—” Kara’s eyes widen. “They were shooting at the anti-alien crowd. That was a human that Henshaw hit. But they’re the ones protesting Lillian’s indictment!”

Alex’s eyes are wet when she looks at her. “Lena overheard. She thinks it’s Miner all over again, that they’re using weapons that look alien to incite fear. It didn’t matter who they hit, as long as they looked human.” Her hands tighten around Kara’s and, in her weakened state, Kara can feel her grip pinching her bones. “There must be a reason, Kara,” she says, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. “Dad wouldn’t—he’s being forced, or somehow he—”

“Alex, we’ll figure it out. We’ll save him together, we will.” Alex’s lips press into a thin line, and she nods once.

Slowly, the range of Kara’s hearing expands as the sun lamps heal her: she registers Maggie talking to someone at the NCPD on her phone, Winn and James whispering just out of her reach; a single pair of heels click against the ground, and Kara imagines Lena pacing in the other room, back and forth and back again.

A thought occurs to her. “Why a Medusa gun?” she asks. “Why not a regular alien gun, or a light gun if they didn’t want to hurt any of the humans?”

Alex smiles at her for the first time since Kara woke up, eyes sad and glimmering faintly of hope. “I think it was you he didn’t want to hurt.”

-

Lena is looking at her with the strangest expression on her face, and Kara briefly wonders if there’s ice cream on hers.

She sticks her tongue out to lick the corner of her mouth. Lena’s eyes immediately flicker down to follow it and—

Oh. Kara pushes her glasses up, the ice cream shop warm suddenly, feeling a little pleased with herself. She almost doesn’t hear Lena’s question.

“Would you let me cook dinner for you tonight?”

Kara blinks. “Dinner? At your apartment?”

“Yes,” Lena says, laughing, “at my apartment.”

“I would love that!” Kara cocks her head. “Why all of a sudden?”

“I was just thinking how I’ve been to your office and your apartment, even inside your bedroom, and you’ve only ever been to my office.” Lena scrunches her nose at Kara. “And on my balcony.” She leans forward on her elbows; their knees brush under the booth table, and Kara doesn’t move away. “I’d like it, if you came back to my apartment with me and let me do something nice for you.”

Kara gasps playfully. “Are you propositioning me, Ms. Luthor?” she asks, unable to keep a straight face.

“I’m trying,” Lena says.

Kara’s heart spasms, and she has to make an effort to control her facial expression. After a moment, she places a hand over her chest, feigning scandal. “Before we’ve even had our first date?”

“If you come to dinner, we’ll have it covered,” Lena says, grinning, propping her chin up in her palm. Kara thinks she isn’t being very fair in their little game at all, and she suddenly understands what Winn meant about Lena’s intense stare thing.

“I’m not sure I want to wait,” Kara hears herself say. The table groans under her arms.

Lena’s eyes go wide, but she recovers quickly. “Oh?” she says, letting her hand fall to rest on top of Kara’s. A scant few inches separate their lips. The vinyl booth seat creaks when Lena leans even further forward, knees pressing firmly into Kara’s legs. “Would you like me to kiss you, Kara?” she asks, voice low.

Lena’s mouth is cool and sweet from the ice cream when Kara leans in without a word.

Later, when they settle on one of the couches in her living room after dinner, Lena says, “I don’t want to complicate anything for you.” The tips of her fingers run along the undersides of Kara’s. “I know that things are very strange right now, with your foster father.”

A smile graces Kara’s face. She closes the distance between them slowly, threading a hand through the hair at Lena’s temple, and Lena doesn’t move, allowing Kara to set their pace. Their lips touch and part and touch again, kisses sweet and insistent, before Kara pulls away. Lena breathes hard, her eyes dark. “I don’t think things will ever not be strange,” Kara murmurs, watching Lena’s hair slip through her fingers. “Not on this Earth.”

-

The prosecution calls Lena to court.

Kara sits among the press in the gallery of the courtroom, beside the reporter from CatCo that’s been assigned to Lillian Luthor’s case. She’s mostly there to learn, he tells her, and to contribute notes about Lena that are relevant to her testimony; he’s writing an article that details the court proceedings and she’s supposed to write a follow-up that comments on Lena’s account of what happened at Thanksgiving compared to Supergirl’s, interspersed with observations about Lena and her stance on aliens.

The other reporters have been murmuring all morning that they expect Lena’s testimony to contradict Supergirl’s on every count, and Kara has to remind herself that they don’t know Lena at all.

The courtroom stills when the attorney for the prosecution calls for her next witness and Lena walks in. She swears an oath of truth before sitting down in the witness box, her back straight and proud, and the gallery releases a collective breath.

For all that Lena had secretly stressed and worried about today when she thought Kara wasn’t looking, Lena conducts herself with grace, unruffled by the packed courtroom and the reporters furiously noting down her every move while her mother sits only a few feet in front of her. She answers each of the prosecution’s questions without trouble, as she would at any of L-Corp’s press conferences, and only once does she seek Kara out in the gallery where she told her she would be, making eye contact as the defence begins to cross-examine her. Kara watches her hands relax a little on the stand.

She finds Lena in the washroom later, after the court proceedings conclude for the day, hunched over a sink. Lena straightens at the sound of the door being pushed open, immediately turning to the paper towel dispenser, before throwing a look at the mirror and catching sight of Kara. The door swings shut behind her, and she locks it.

“Kara,” Lena breathes out, turning around. Her lipstick is gone in the places where she’s chewed it off.

Kara takes her hand, stroking the delicate skin of her wrist. “Lena, what are you still doing here?”

“The press are still outside,” she says stiltedly, “and the demonstrators.”

Kara nods, watching her carefully. “Can I do anything for you?”

Lena shifts, not saying anything. Her hand is tense in Kara’s, spine rigid, shoulders stiff.

“Would you like me to take you home?” Kara asks.

After a beat, Lena nods.

Kara flies them back to her own apartment; halfway to Lena’s building, Lena asks, so quietly that she almost doesn’t hear, if Kara would take them to hers instead.

Lena kicks her heels off first, then shrugs off her blazer. They enter Kara’s bedroom one after the other, and Kara hands Lena something comfortable to wear. They change on opposite sides of the room, backs turned. Kara takes her glasses off slowly, changing out of her clothes at a human speed.

Kara orders pizza from the place across the street, and while she types up her article, Lena sits beside her, laughing occasionally at the television.

By the end of the night, Lena is nestled into Kara’s side, pressing soft kisses to her neck and smiling at the breathy noises Kara makes. They go to the bathroom to wash up and brush their teeth. Kara pushes Lena down into her bed and tucks her in before she can even suggest sleeping on the couch, and she lies down next to her, Lena on the left and Kara on the right. After a moment, Lena rolls over to face her, and with a final kiss that tastes like mint, Kara wraps an arm around her waist. She waits until Lena falls asleep before following suit.

A nightmare wakes Lena up in the middle of the night, a few hours later. She’s momentarily confused by her surroundings and Kara at her side, thrashing wildly, but otherwise looks unsurprised, and Kara wonders how long she’s been having them.

“Lena,” Kara says softly, sitting up with her, “it’s all right. You’re in my apartment. You’re fine.” She’s careful not to touch Lena until Lena looks at her with recognition in her eyes, lungs heaving. They lie back down.

“Tell me something,” Lena says, and Kara remembers the nightmares she had as a child, how Alex brought her back to Earth every time.

“Shrimp legs freak me out,” Kara says instantly, to a crazed little laugh from Lena. “I wanted to study astronomy once, when I was younger. I haven’t had a real conversation in my own language with another living person in years and, sometimes, I worry that I’ll ...” Kara doesn’t say anything for a time. “I paint portraits of home.”

She hums, fingers combing through the hair at the back of Lena’s neck soothingly, until her breaths have calmed slightly. The silence settles around them again, until she says, “Do you know the symbol on my suit?”

“The ‘S’?” Lena replies after a moment.

“It isn’t an ‘S’,” Kara corrects gently. Lena looks up at her curiously, but Kara only smiles. Another time.

The steady beat of Lena’s heart, slower now than it was a moment ago, is sweet in Kara’s ears, calming. “I hate seeing it everywhere,” she whispers.

“What do you mean?”

“In art. Keychains, souvenirs. Even the children I see wearing costumes and capes emblazoned with it ... I hate seeing it. I hate seeing it being used in that way, so carelessly, when no one really knows what it means. When even I feel like—” Kara’s breath catches in her throat, “—like I don’t deserve to wear it sometimes.”

“And Superman?”

Kara doesn’t answer for a long time, trying to remember the last time she saw her family’s crest on a planet that wasn’t Earth. It must have been when her mother and father sent her off in her pod, she realizes with a pang, and then again, later, on Kal-El’s chest in the Black Mercy dream. She’s glad, suddenly, of the dark. “I don’t think he will ever really know what it means.”

-

Cadmus doesn’t make another move until National City has nearly shrugged off the last of spring.

They broadcast another video to every computer and television screen in the city that says much of the usual: that aliens are dangerous invaders biding their time, that they’re waiting to stage an attack en masse on the humans of National City, and that Cadmus is the city’s only hope.

Alex calls Kara downtown only five minutes later, where a group of aliens are rampaging through the streets with no apparent motive. The DEO sends droves of agents to contain the situation, while NCPD officers evacuate the surrounding buildings, and that’s when she sees him.

“Alex, that’s Draaga.”

“Draaga?” Alex says, distracted. There’s shouting coming from her end.

“The alien I fought at Roulette’s fight club. What’s he doing here?” She looks around. “I saw all of these aliens at the fight club. Oh no, do you think M’gann—”

“Supergirl,” J’onn says. She sees him a block down, fighting another alien in his Martian form. “Contain these aliens first. We’ll figure out why they’re doing this later.”

“Right,” Kara says. She dives at Draaga from the left, remembering what Mon-El told her about his right leg.

Even with J’onn and the other DEO agents and, later, Guardian helping, dealing with the aliens takes hours and hours, and by the time they’ve been subdued, night has fallen. Kara looks at her phone and winces; there are three missed calls and a series of texts from Lena.

To her surprise, when Kara gets back to the DEO headquarters in the city after finishing up at the facility in the desert, Lena is already there, talking to Winn and, strangely, James.

“Lena, James! What are you two doing here?

Winn looks at Lena nervously, and James clears his throat. “Oh, we were just discussing Guardian’s body armour,” Lena says. “Winn and James had some  _very_  interesting things to say.”

“Oh yeah, they love him,” Kara says, rolling her eyes.

“ _Really_?” Lena says. James coughs loudly.

“Yes.” Kara frowns, gaze flicking between the three of them before settling on Lena. “What are you doing at the DEO?”

“Have you checked your phone?” Kara smiles at her, and Lena rolls her eyes fondly. “Cyborg Superman and a band of other superpowered humans attacked L-Corp while the city was distracted by the aliens in the streets.”

“They  _what_?” Kara rushes to Lena’s side, running her hands down Lena’s arms and ribcage. “Are you all right? Did anything happen? I’m going to—”

“Kara.” Lena grabs her hands. “I’m fine. Nothing happened. I had L-Corp fortified against attacks after the break-in in my office. We were prepared for them. I’m fine,” she says again, voice soothing. Winn and James watch them curiously.

Kara takes a deep breath, relaxing a little. “What did they want?”

“We think they were after Isotope-454 again,” Winn says. “But Lena moved her store after Thanksgiving.” Lena nods.

“Even if they didn’t manage to steal any, I suspect they’ll be able to synthesize some of their own soon,” she adds.

“Eliza already found a cure, didn’t she?”

“Mon-El’s immune system was already fighting off the virus – Eliza’s solution just helped it out. It’s different for other aliens,” Winn says. “We’d normally have to develop a vaccination, administer it to the population, let it take effect for a couple of weeks ...”

“But Maggie says the Science division at the NCPD has been working out a cure since last year, and they’re hopeful,” Lena says. “Once it’s finished, the DEO should be able to disperse it if the need should ever arise.”

“They must know that,” Kara says. “What do they want?”

“Maybe they have something else they want to spread across the city?” James suggests.

“Sort of like Myriad,” Winn points out. “Maybe—”

“Supergirl.” Kara turns around to see J’onn and Alex walking up to them. Alex raises an eyebrow at Winn and James, but otherwise says nothing. She nods at Lena. “There’s something I need to show you.”

Kara looks at Alex, who shrugs. “I’ll call you later, Lena,” she says, before turning back to J’onn. “Lead the way.”

They’re almost out of the lobby when Lena grabs Kara by the wrist and whispers something directly in her ear so that no one else can hear.

“One more thing,” she says. “Winn showed me his picture and I recognized him during the attack on L-Corp. Jeremiah was there.”

Kara looks up, wide-eyed. She throws a quick glance over her shoulder at Alex, who’s talking to J’onn and doesn’t notice, before looking back at Lena. Lena looks at Alex, too, before saying, “Be careful,” and turning away. Kara wonders what she means.

J’onn takes them past the infirmary and the training room, to the cell where Mon-El used to live; that was before he’d gotten a job at the alien bar where M’gann used to work.

Apparently, they traded more than jobs.

“J’onn,” Alex says, alarmed. “What’s M’gann doing here? And why is she locked up?”

J’onn’s mouth presses into a firm line. He ignores her question. “Supergirl, you said you recognized the aliens from Veronica Sinclair’s fight club. She might know something about what happened today.”

Kara startles, breaking horrified eye contact with M’gann. “Yeah,” she says. “But J’onn ...”

“It is not your concern,” J’onn says stiffly, not looking at either of them.

“She helped save your life,” Alex says. “All she’s done so far is help.”

“Help?” J’onn says lowly. The muscles in his shoulders tense up and bulge, and the anger twisting his face renders him nearly unrecognizable. “She’s a White Martian, Alex, don’t pretend you didn’t realize. She’s the reason we had to run from our homes. She’s the reason my wife and children are dead! She’s the reason that I—” his voice cracks, “—am  _alone_  on this godforsaken planet!”

“J’onn,” Kara says, soft in the wake of J’onn’s anguish. She spares M’gann a glance, silent in her cell and looking almost as if she agrees with him. “M’gann is not the cause of any of those things. No more than Alex or Lena are responsible for Cadmus, or Clark and I are the cause for what Non and Astra and the other Kryptonians tried to do last year. No more than I ...” Kara sucks in a breath. “M’gann is a good person. Alex was right – there aren’t very many good aliens on this planet. But they don’t deserve to be grouped together with the bad, to be punished for crimes they didn’t commit. The cycle of bloodshed will never end otherwise.”

“But they’re out there,” J’onn whispers, sounding exhausted all of a sudden, “they’re coming. Every day, they think of nothing but more ways to kill us.”

Kara takes his hand, and Alex steps forward to take the other. “Then we’ll deal with them, when they come,” she says. “We’ll figure something out. But this?” Alex gestures in M’gann’s direction. “This is not how we’ll do it.”

J’onn dips his head in acknowledgement. He grips their hands tightly before letting go and, with one last look at M’gann, he leaves.

Kara and Alex release M’gann from her cell. She doesn’t end up knowing anything about the assault on National City, but she tells them about where Roulette might be: a hideout on the outskirts of the city.

Her information pans out; Winn finds a safe house right where M’gann said it would be, with Roulette inside it.

“I saw it on the news,” Veronica says, when Kara and Alex burst in, as if she was expecting them, dressed to the nines in her cutout dress and wearing heels to match. “You’re a magnificent fighter. It’s a shame, I’ve been dying to get a Kryptonian on my roster. I could always use one of Lillian’s monsters, but the clients—” she cuts them a look, “—they’re not terribly interested in seeing humans fight. You know the elite. Particular tastes. They only like authentics.” She looks Kara up and down.

“Lillian? So you do work with her.”

Veronica smiles. “Did I say that?”

“Tell us the truth,” Alex says, “or we’ll—”

“Arrest me?” Veronica raises an eyebrow. “Without due process? That doesn’t sound very lawful of you. And just after all that ugly business with Maxwell Lord last year.” Kara and Alex stiffen.

“Agent Schott—” J’onn says in their ears.

“Maxwell Lord is under constant surveillance,” Winn says. “Vasquez set it up the minute you guys let him walk. If he said anything, we would have known.”

“Then how—”

“Friends in high places, remember?” Veronica says, unaware of the debate taking place on their private line. “Speaking of friends, how is our dear friend Lena doing, Supergirl?”

Alex makes to move, but before she can do anything, Kara steps forward and says, “If you even  _touch_  her—”

Veronica looks delighted at having gotten a rise out of Kara and surprised, too, by her fury. Her smile turns sharp and she tilts her head. “No, I already had my fill of that.”

Kara bristles. Alex looks at her from the corner of her eye. “What are you planning with Cadmus?” she asks.

“Cadmus? Oh no, I keep to my own affairs. I only offer them what they need sometimes in exchange for their services. I’d like those aliens back, by the way.”

“After you just let them loose on the city—” Kara begins.

“Let them loose? Did you think all those aliens were attacking the city of their own volition?”

Kara falters. “I saw them, they were beyond reason—”

“And you didn’t think—” Veronica laughs. “That’s very little faith coming from National City’s own alien hero. Though I suppose you had your own little ... indiscretion last year, and look how the city reacted then.”

-

“Sinclair was telling the truth,” Maggie says, “there’s definitely something weird going on with these aliens.”

Alex sighs. “That could explain their behaviour.”

“I can’t believe I ...” Kara groans. “She was right, I didn’t even think to give them the benefit of the doubt.”

“There’s no way you could have known,” Maggie says. She clicks away on her computer. “Here, look at this.” Kara and Alex come around to her side of the desk to look at the monitor. “That’s a picture of the affected DNA sample you brought, and that’s the Medusa virus.”

“They’re the same,” Kara says.

“Almost.” Alex narrows her eyes. “It’s close.”

Maggie nods. “They must have synthesized a near-identical virus, except it doesn’t kill aliens.”

“It makes them behave erratically,” Alex says. Maggie nods again. “It made them terrorize the city. That’s what she meant by what happened to Kara last year.”

“And does this one ...”

“Yeah, this one doesn’t affect Kryptonian DNA, either.” Maggie looks at Alex, watching her carefully. She says nothing.

“Alex, Lena told me he was there at L-Corp, the day of the attack,” Kara says delicately. “Jeremiah. I think they ... they gave him powers like they did Henshaw.”

Before Alex can say anything, her phone rings. She picks up, and the blood drains from her face as she listens to the person on the other end. Finally, she hangs up, and turns to Kara. “That was J’onn. Suspicious activity in an abandoned warehouse near the Cadmus building you were kept in when you were kidnapped. He says he thinks it’s dad,” she whispers.

Kara looks at Maggie, who stares back helplessly. “Okay,” she says, placing a gentle hand on Alex’s shoulder. Maggie does the same. “Let’s go.”

“Should I call for backup?” Maggie asks. Alex gives her a tortured look.

“No,” Kara says. “No, it’s fine. I’ll be there, and J’onn will step in if he needs to.”

Maggie drives Alex’s car, following Kara, who's flying in the sky just ahead of them. Every once in a while, she looks down, watching the two of them through the windshield. They don’t speak; Alex’s face is drawn and pale, and she looks straight ahead, but Maggie holds her hand silently over the centre console, driving one-handed and, not for the first time, Kara is infinitely grateful for her presence in Alex’s life.

Kara lands, waiting for the car to come to a stop. She averts her eyes when Maggie presses her lips to the back of Alex’s hand, and she blocks out their conversation. Alex comes out of the car alone, her gun strapped to her side. Her hand flutters over it for a moment, before she pulls it out of its holster and grips it tightly in both hands, muzzle down, nodding at Kara to go first. Alex taps her earpiece, reporting to J’onn.

“Kara,” J’onn says into her earpiece a moment later. “Watch out for her.”

“I will,” Kara whispers, so quietly that Alex doesn’t hear.

The warehouse is messy and badly-lit, sunlight streaming in through the rafters and holes in the walls. And there, standing in the middle of the warehouse floor, is Jeremiah.

Alex inhales sharply, her hands trembling. Jeremiah turns, and he looks just as he had the last time Kara saw him, not a day older than he was when he left for the mission in Peru.

“Alex,” he says, “Kara.” In a split second, he appears to stand in front of them, and Kara feels Alex jump a little at her side. Jeremiah reaches forward to put a hand on both of their arms.

“Dad, what ...” Alex says. He shakes his head.

“I don’t have much time,” Jeremiah says quickly. “Alex, I am so proud of you. I’ve watched you from afar, and you have been so strong every step of the way. Thank you for taking care of Kara all this time, and your mother. Thank you for taking care of each other.” He hugs them both for a long moment, before pulling back.

“Dad, what’s happening?” Alex asks desperately, tears streaming down her face. “Come back with us. They’ll help you at the DEO. And mom ...”

Jeremiah shakes his head. “I haven’t finished here yet. Listen carefully, I need to tell you both something: do not interfere with Cadmus’s plans.”

Kara and Alex stiffen at the same time. Kara pulls away a little. “What are you saying?”

“I have tried my best to make sure the two of you don’t get caught in the crosshairs, but I can’t guarantee your safety if you keep trying to foil Cadmus’s plans – especially you, Kara. The Medusa virus was a lucky break. It doesn’t kill Kryptonians, but I can’t promise—”

“What? Jeremiah, the Medusa virus nearly wiped out all the aliens in National City!”

“Look Kara, we’re trying to—”

“‘ _We_ ’?” Kara looks at Alex, horrorstruck. Alex doesn’t return her look; she’s staring at Jeremiah, speechless. “Why are you helping them? First, at the protest, and then at L-Corp.” Kara’s eyes widen and she recoils, stumbling backward, but unwilling to leave Alex’s side. “Did you help synthesize the Medusa virus? And the version Cadmus used on those aliens?”

“You have to understand,” Jeremiah says, looking between them, his voice firm. His hand is wrapped tightly around Alex’s arm. “Cadmus has a plan. I’m only doing what’s best for the greater good.”

“What ‘greater good’?” Kara asks. “Jeremiah, you’re killing aliens!”

“ _What good has ever come out of aliens_?” Jeremiah yells. Kara hears the precise moment the bone in Alex’s arm begins to protest the pressure being exerted on it, and in the blink of an eye, Kara frees Alex from his grasp and backs away, her cape swishing around her. Alex stares at Jeremiah like he’s grown a second head.

“Dad,” she says finally, “Cadmus is ... hundreds of people have died since Cadmus began operating out of National City. DEO agents, innocent humans, and good aliens.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Jeremiah says, shaking his head again. “The lives of every human being on Earth have been endangered countless times. Even your life, Kara, and Clark’s. Cadmus and the DEO should be working  _together_  to eradicate the threat they pose against us – aliens are the reason why these organizations exist. What’s a few hundred people dead, or a few thousand ‘good’ aliens, to a safe Earth where there are none? Sacrifices have to be made. That’s how I ended up here.”

“Kara, Alex. There are flying men approaching the warehouse from the south,” J’onn says over the communication line. Kara takes a step back, pulling Alex with her.

“What happened to you, Jeremiah? What did they do to you?”

“Aliens ruined our  _lives_ , Kara!” Jeremiah advances on them. “Your sister’s, and your mother’s, and mine!”

“No,” Kara says, tears welling up in her eyes. From outside, she can hear Alex’s car starting up and Maggie shouting for them to get out. She backs away fast. ”Aliens have been here since before Kal-El even landed on Earth. Before Clark became Superman. We’ve been here since before Alex was even born.” She takes a shuddering breath. “What ruined your lives was me.”

-

“How’s Alex?”

The smell of take-out swirls around Kara’s apartment, and the sun finally sets outside. Some of the falling darkness seeps in through the windows; Lena flicks on a light.

Kara grimaces. “Not great,” she says, setting a plate of pad Thai in front of where Lena sits at the table. Lena uncorks a bottle of wine, pouring them both glasses and, after a nod, pouring a bit of alien alcohol from a flask into Kara’s glass. “She won’t talk to me or anyone. Not even Maggie.”

“Give her some time to open up,” Lena suggests. “It’s difficult, learning our parents aren’t who we think they are. You said that yourself.”

“Yeah.” Kara sighs. “I’m just worried.” Lena places a hand on her knee and smiles sympathetically. “It’s even harder on her, because she hasn’t seen Jeremiah in years, and thought he was dead for the majority of them.”

“And you?”

Kara hesitates. “I’m managing.” Lena gives her a look. “I am! It’s just the usual stuff.” She waves a hand dismissively.

Lena looks at her sadly. They eat in silence. The alien alcohol warms Kara’s throat all the way down to her stomach, although that might just be Lena, whose hand hasn’t moved from her knee.

“I was thinking,” Kara says, after they finish eating and sit down on the couch in the living room. Lena hums, stroking Kara’s hair absentmindedly; they’re squished together, Kara’s head resting on her shoulder. “I want to tell people about us.” Lena’s hand stills.

“You do?”

“I mean, it’s not like I was trying to keep it a secret, but I think it would be nice, don’t you?” She sits up. “Plus, I think Alex might be suspicious.”

“Why would she be suspicious?” Lena asks.

Kara turns pink, looking down. “I may have gotten weirdly protective of you in front of her when we were talking to Veronica Sinclair the other day?”

Lena doesn’t try to stifle the amused tilt of her lips. “Oh, you did?”

“Don’t laugh!”

Lena makes a serious face. “I would never,” she says, before scrunching her nose up and grinning playfully at Kara.

Kara laughs. “You’re lucky I love you.” Lena’s heart falters, and Kara looks up at her, concerned. She’s staring at Kara, her eyes wide and her lips parted, and Kara realizes what she’s said. “I mean, I love you! You’re not lucky! I mean—”

“I love you, too,” Lena says, interrupting Kara’s nervous rambling.

“You do?” Kara whispers. Lena nods, grinning. “Okay. Well, good.” She continues listing her evidence through her blush. “I’m pretty sure Alex already knew I liked you before we ever started dating.”

Lena’s smile softens. She leans in and kisses Kara for a long minute before pulling away, eyes dancing with mirth, looking at Kara without speaking.

“What?” Kara says, laughing. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Lena shakes her head. “Because I’m happy. Sometimes, it can be difficult to wrap my head around.”

“How’s that?” Kara asks.

“I told you before, I came to National City to make a name for myself and my company. I expected obstacles and setbacks,” Lena says. “I never expected you.”

-

It turns out Kara doesn’t have to worry about telling Alex about her relationship with Lena.

“Oh my  _god_.”

Kara wakes up instantly, sitting up.

“What? What is it?” She looks up groggily, noticing the new person in the room. “Alex!”

“What the hell is going on?” Alex asks. Lena groans in the bed, eyes still closed. She shushes them. Alex looks down at her incredulously.

“Oh, uh. Surprise,” Kara says sleepily. She sniffs, perking up immediately. “Is that coffee I smell? And doughnuts from the bakery on your street!”

Lena begins to sit up, too, realizing her efforts to go back to sleep are useless. Alex yells, covering her eyes. “What are you  _doing_?”

“She’s wearing clothes, Alex,” Kara says, flushing.

“I don’t want to know,” Alex says, turning to leave the room. “I’m going to the cafe across the street to get another coffee for your  _guest_. Please make yourselves decent.”

When Alex comes back with a latte for Lena, she and Kara are already sitting at the table in the kitchen, looking more awake. As soon as Alex enters the apartment, Kara dives for the doughnuts she brought. Lena thanks her for the coffee.

“So this is ... new,” Alex says, gesturing between the two of them.

Kara winces. “Uhm, sort of? Like, a-few-months new?”

“Months?” Alex says in a small voice. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There was just so much going on,” Kara says, and Lena nods in agreement.

“My mother’s trial,” she says. “And Cadmus.”

Alex sighs. “Well, Maggie’s going to be thrilled.” Kara tilts her head. “She’s been going on about how you two are secretly dating for—” Alex squints, thinking, “—probably longer than you’ve even been together.”

“Well, she is a detective,” Lena jokes weakly. Alex laughs.

“Don’t tell her you said that, she’s going to be smug enough as it is.” They drink their coffees in the silence that settles around them.

“I came by to say I’m sorry,” Alex says quietly after a while. Lena gets up to leave. “No, Lena, you can stay. I sort of ignored everyone for a while there.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Lena says, sitting back down. Kara nods enthusiastically. “It was a difficult situation.”

“Still, it was unfair to freeze you out.” She grips her cup. “I needed to sort out how I felt.”

“And how do you feel?” Kara asks. Alex lifts one shoulder.

“I’m okay. It was hard, listening to him say all of those awful things and trying to connect them back to the dad I knew.” She looks down. “I heard him. He really thinks what he’s doing is right.”

“So did my mother,” Lena says carefully.

“And Non and Astra,” Kara adds.

Alex nods. “You’re right. I was determined to make sense of what he was saying, and I should have known better.” She sighs. “And Kara, I am so, so sorry you had to listen to him say all those things about aliens. It must have been horrible.”

Kara shrugs, looking away. “No more horrible than it was for you.” Alex frowns at her.

“I heard what you said,” she says quietly. “About how you’re what ruined our lives.” Lena turns to Kara, looking unsurprised. “Kara, where did you get that idea from?”

“I—nowhere,” Kara says. Her stomach churns. “It’s just the truth.”

“Kara. My life was not  _ruined_  by you. Yes, it changed,” Alex says, grabbing one of Kara’s hands, clenched on the table, as Lena takes the other, “but there are some things I wouldn’t have any other way. And you are one of them.”

“But ... Jeremiah—” Kara says, her voice breaking.

“Is my dad, and I love him, but you’re my sister and—” Alex purses her lips, and Kara remembers what she’d said to Lena in her office, about things that just aren’t worth changing, and how horrible she’d felt then, admitting it. “—I wouldn’t change that for anything.”

“ _Alex_.”

“This is my life now. You and mom,” she says firmly, before looking at Lena, “and Maggie and J’onn and Lena, Winn, and James. And maybe dad, too. Someday.”

“We’ll get him back,” Kara says through the ache in her throat, “we’ll make him see that what he’s doing is wrong.”

Alex smiles at her sadly, and their words seem to echo around them.  _So did my mother. And Non and Astra_.

“We can try.”

-

As Lillian’s trial draws nearer to a close, the alien attacks on National City increase in frequency.

“What are they planning?” Kara says, frustrated. She flicks her hair out of her face; the summer sun has lightened it, and it shines white in the entrance to the DEO. Winn greets her from his desk as she makes her way to the centre of the room, where Alex hums, reading a report. “Synthetic Medusa again?”

“Yup,” Alex says, popping the ‘p’. “This is the third one, now.”

“And the antidote?”

“Maggie says mom has been helping a lot, but the synthetic Medusa’s too different from the actual virus. They had to start from scratch for that one.”

“How’s that going, by the way? Maggie and Eliza, I mean.”

Alex rolls her eyes. “They love each other. Mom loves telling stories about me, and Maggie loves hearing them.” Kara laughs at her expense. “Hey! Wait ‘til mom tells Lena stories about you,” Alex says, grumbling, “then we’ll see how you like it.”

Kara raises her hands. “Sorry, sorry! I’m glad they’re getting along.”

Alex glares at her for a moment, before smiling shyly. “Yeah, me too. And Maggie says mom’s doing a lot better, with dad and everything.”

“Good, that’s good,” Kara says. Alex nods.

“Speaking of Lena, though, is she all right? I saw the news,” she says, gesturing to the computer monitor on the desk beside her.

“Yeah. She’s fine,” Kara says quietly. “I was going to drop by her office later so we could go back home together.”

“The defense is starting to wrap up its case on Lillian.”

“Yeah,” Kara says. “The reporter from CatCo following the case says he’s pretty sure Lillian will be locked up for good, in spite of the traction the anti-alien movement is gaining with all these attacks.”

Alex nods. “The DEO keeps track of anti-alien forums online. Awareness of the situation in National City is spreading like wildfire. It isn’t just the States anymore. Anti-alien organizations in other countries around the world are urging their governments to turn aliens away, using National City and Metropolis as examples. It’s still slow-moving, since we stop the attacks before much can happen, but with more and more aliens ...” Alex frowns. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Alex, that’s it!”

“What is?”

“Winn and James were saying—and I didn’t think much about it then—”

“What was I saying?” Winn asks, coming up from behind them.

“That Isotope-454 could be used sort of like Myriad!” Kara says excitedly.

“Myriad controlled minds,” Alex says. “Isotope-454 disperses viruses.”

“Yes, yes,” Kara says, “but the whole idea behind Myriad was that humans could be made to save the Earth. A single group of Kryptonians can do a lot of damage, but the entire human population?”

“That’s what was so brilliant about Myriad,” Winn adds. Alex and Kara turn to look at him. “I mean, in, like, an evil, not brilliant way,” he says hastily. “They didn’t have to do the work, when we could all be forced to do it for them.”

“Exactly,” Kara says.

“But what does that have to do with Cadmus?” Alex asks.

“At best, if Lena hadn’t stopped her mom last year, we’d have a city full of dead aliens. In the short term, that would mean National City was safe by Cadmus’s standards. But the entire country would rally against them.”

“They’d be shut down,” Alex says, catching on. “It would force the president’s hand – the government would have to step in.”

“Yes, and now Cadmus realizes that. Instead of killing the aliens in National City, they’ve synthesized a new virus that drives aliens to attack it. Remember what Roulette said about me? About the Red Kryptonite last year?  _That’s what they want_.”

“To turn the country against aliens,” Alex says in realization, turning away and tapping her earpiece to call J’onn.

Kara nods. “Cadmus won’t have to do anything if anti-alien sentiment spreads across the nation. The government will do their job for them.”

“Turn the entire country against aliens? How are they going to manage that?” Winn asks, brows furrowed in thought. A second later, the blood drains from his face. “They’re going to disperse the synthetic Medusa across National City.”

Kara’s expression is grim, and she thinks of what Jeremiah said. “What’s a few thousand dead to a safe Earth, right?”

-

Kara calls Lena after a quick talk with J’onn and Winn, and she comes to the DEO right away. She catches sight of Kara and walks up to her.

“What’s going on?” Lena asks. Kara pulls her into a hug, and Lena responds immediately, wrapping her arms around Kara. “You sounded urgent on the phone. Are you all right?”

Kara pulls away, smiling at her. “We think we’ve figured out Cadmus’s plan.” Lena’s eyes widen.

“Did Jeremiah—”

“No, no,” Kara says. “But that sort of is why you’re here. Come on.” They walk into a briefing room, where J’onn waits with Alex, Winn, and Maggie.

J’onn stands up and explains Kara’s theory. By the end of it, Maggie and Lena have both gone pale.

“Even if only a fraction of the aliens in National City have super-strength or powers, they’ll be endangering half the city, human and alien,” Maggie says.

“Yes,” J’onn says, “it appears Cadmus is willing to make that sacrifice.”

“What are we going to do to stop them?”

“That is why we’ve gathered you here today. If Cadmus plans to unleash the synthetic Medusa on the alien population, there are only two things we  _can_  do.”

“Make an antidote, or stop them before they can put their plans into motion,” Lena says. J’onn nods.

“Detective Sawyer, where are you with the cure for the synthetic Medusa?”

“It’s coming along, but we don’t know enough about alien biology, even with the DEO’s help. It could take months to come up with something feasible. The Medusa virus is unpredictable, and so is the synthetic version,” Maggie says.

J’onn considers that. “How long would it take to create an element analogous to Isotope-454?”

“If they created the synthetic Medusa in a matter of months, Isotope-454 should not be any more difficult,” Lena answers.

“Then we’ll have to stop them before they get the chance,” J’onn says. “That’s why I brought you here. Will you help the DEO stop Cadmus?”

Lena nods firmly. “What can I do?”

“While Detective Sawyer continues to try to find an antidote, and Kara and the DEO deal with the attacks on the city, I would like you and Agent Schott to devise a way to locate Cadmus and their headquarters.”

“See, I had this idea,” Winn jumps in excitedly. “Project Cadmus originated as a genetic engineering lab. When they saved Hank and, uh, Jeremiah,” he says delicately, “the two of them were left for dead. And now they have superpowers. They must have been infused with alien DNA.”

“And you think we could repurpose L-Corp's technology to scan the city for Cyborg Superman types.” Lena thinks for a moment. “That shouldn’t be too difficult.”

Kara grins. “Looks like we found a way for the alien detection device to help protect people after all.”

-

“Tell me again,” Kara says after dinner, standing in the middle of Lena’s living room.

Lena is washing the dishes with Maggie, who volunteered, not wanting any part of the impending conversation. Alex takes a sip of wine, clearly enjoying herself.

“Uh,” James says. “I’m Guardian?”

“And you?” Kara says, towering over James and Winn sitting beside each other on the couch.

“I helped him?” Winn says, glancing at Alex for help. She shrugs, sitting on the couch behind Kara.

“I told you she’d take it well,” she says.

“How could you do something so  _stupid_?” Kara yells.

“It wasn’t Winn,” James says. “I pretty much forced him to help me, so don’t blame him.

“No, I  _will_  blame Winn, because he should have told me! Why would you do this?”

“I wanted to help!” James shouts back. “I felt powerless, and now I can actually  _do_  something about all of the terrible things that happen every day. Don’t tell me you’re not grateful for how your powers allow you to protect the city!”

Kara freezes, and she hears Lena stop washing the dishes for a moment, listening in. “Yes,” she says stiffly. “Yes, I am grateful for the powers I have, but I know that they aren’t enough. That a supersuit isn’t the only thing that makes me a hero.” She places a hand on her chest, where the symbol of the House of El sits under the shirt she’s wearing. “Stronger together, remember? I have Alex and J’onn and Winn and you to help, because I know that I wouldn’t be able to do this without every single one of you behind me. That I would collapse under the pressure that’s put on me if Cat didn’t call me every week. That these nights with Lena and Maggie and everyone here are some of the only bits of normalcy I ever get, and I am grateful for every single one of them. You should have told me.” The anger falls from James’s face and Winn looks down. ”You should have let me help you.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t say anything, Kara,” James says. “I just wanted to make a difference, and I knew you’d be upset if I told you.” He sighs. “All I’ve done is stand around while you and Clark and Alex and Winn help protect the city. I wanted to do something, too.”

“Believe it or not, I already think you’re making a difference at CatCo,” Kara says. She takes a deep breath. “But I can’t stop you from putting yourself out there. So I’ll help you however I can.”

“Thanks Kara,” James says, smiling, as Lena and Maggie join them.

Lena takes Kara’s hand and pulls her onto one of the loveseats. She runs a soothing hand down Kara’s tense back, and Kara lets herself relax, smiling at Lena and pecking her on the lips. When they pull apart and look up, Kara notices belatedly that the others are gaping at them.

“Oh yeah,” Kara says, looking guiltily at Lena, who gives her a small smile. “Lena and I are dating.”

“I  _knew_  it,” Maggie says triumphantly, and Alex looks at them with an expression that clearly says  _I told you so_.

After Lena closes the door behind Alex and Maggie at the end of the night—Kara catches Maggie winking at Lena, who rolls her eyes—she turns around to find Kara standing in front of her.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” she says, wringing her hands. “I didn’t mean to tell them about us without any kind of warning, it was an accident.”

Lena looks at her, surprised. “Have you been worrying about that all night?” Kara shrugs. “Of course I’d want our friends to know. You can tell whomever you like, whenever you like.”

“Even Eliza?” Lena nods. Kara beams at her, pressing kisses to Lena’s face and neck until she’s laughing breathily. “I love you. Have I told you that?”

Lena’s smile softens. “Only every chance you get.” She leans in to kiss Kara, her hands falling to her hips.

Kara doesn’t really get breathless; she doesn’t need to breathe as much as humans do, but her stomach still flips and, when their lips part, Lena’s teeth dragging along Kara’s bottom lip, Kara’s eyes stay closed for a long moment as she tries to regain her bearings. When she opens them again, Lena’s are dark, the corners of her lips quirking upward. Kara stares.

Lena flips the lights off. She takes Kara by the hand, pulling her further into the apartment, and when Kara realizes where they’re going, she lifts Lena up, speeding into her room and jumping into the bed with Lena in her arms.

Lena yelps, then laughs brightly with Kara, the two of them sinking into her mattress. They lie there for a moment, Lena breathless and Kara staring up at the stars through Lena’s ceiling, shining brilliantly in the night sky.

After she regains her breath, Lena flips over on top of Kara, straddling her hips, and then all Kara sees is her.

-

“Did you know,” Kara says, her arm slung around Lena’s bare waist, the two of them facing each other in Lena’s bed, “that Krypton was much colder than Earth is?”

Lena hums lazily, turning her head halfway to partially bury her face in her pillow. “I suppose that makes sense. Earth’s sun is much warmer than Rao would have been,” she says delicately.

“Yes,” Kara agrees. She shuffles closer, grip tightening. Warmth gathers in the space between them. “In many ways, Krypton was Earth’s polar opposite. The planet was polluted and the air was thick with smog and, most days, I wasn’t even allowed outside. Everything was red, so red, and dim, except the oceans and the rivers, before they had all dried up.

“Argo City was special,” Kara says, her eyes lighting up. “It was the epicentre of colour and diversity on our planet. The crystal spires and towers in the city were made with a material a little like glass, except sturdier, and each one was like one of Earth’s prisms. An indestructible city of light,” she says, voice wistful, a little sad. Lena combs her fingers through the hair at Kara’s temple, and she closes her eyes, leaning into the touch.

The knot in Kara’s chest loosens. “Most of all, I remember how cold it could get. Especially in Argo City.”

“The warmer air would settle above the smog, and stay trapped there,” Lena murmurs, head turning to face Kara fully.

“That’s what my father told me,” Kara says. “The inhabitants of Krypton have naturally higher core body temperatures, but it was still so cold. Krypton’s summers were much colder, even, than Earth’s winters.” She begins to run a finger up and down Lena’s back, and Lena shivers at the sensation.

“Space was even colder. Twenty-four years is a long time in a timeless region of space, even when you’re asleep for most of it,” Kara jokes lightly. “And then I landed on Earth, where the sun shines, and it’s warm, and flowers grow, and you have  _birds_.” Kara sighs in awe. “We had dragons, but they weren’t nearly as cool.”

Lena raises an eyebrow, eyes shining with curiosity. She looks like she has a thousand questions, but she doesn’t interrupt to ask any of them.

“And then,” Kara says, “I met Superman.” She shuts her mouth against the guilt that accompanies the thought of Clark. “And he was safe and grown up, and so very human. And I didn’t know him at all.” Lena presses closer to her, stroking her arm, and Kara realizes, suddenly, that she’s shaking. “And he would never know me.

“I used to resent him for that.” She shudders involuntarily. “I used to resent him for leaving me with the Danvers family, when we could have been together.” Kara swallows thickly. “But how could I begrudge him that, when I was the one who abandoned him first?”

“He was a grown man,” Lena says flatly. “You were a child who had no control over your circumstances.”

“And he never signed on to take care of me,” Kara points out.

“So you were raised by the Danverses.”

“Yes. And I could never use my powers, and I couldn’t talk in my own language, and I tried to be human.” Kara smiles. “And I was awful at it. Alex helped me, but some things you just ... can’t unlearn,” she whispers. “Especially if you don’t want to. Eventually, though, I began to fit in, and I even came to enjoy aspects of my human life, to  _need_  them.

“And then,” Kara says softly, “I found a purpose on this planet. I didn’t always have to be human, and National City wasn’t a prison where I had to be someone I wasn’t anymore. It was a city filled with people I could help, and that I  _wanted_  to help.” The ghost of a smile flits across her lips. “A city filled with lights.” She doesn’t say anything for a long time.

“Why are you telling me all this?” Lena whispers, hushed.

“Because it’s nice to be known,” Kara answers. “Because, once, I came to this planet, and I had nothing. And then Alex and the Danvers family took me in, and then I became Supergirl, and then I became a reporter, and then,” she says, “and  _then_ , I met you.”

Lena is coloured in cool blues and greys; the sun creeps just under the eastern horizon, glowing through the blinds shuttering the windows in Lena’s room, and she can feel its light all the way to her bones.

“Because I miss Krypton every day, but I have never felt warmer,” Kara says, “than I have on this planet.”

-

“It’s done!”

Winn comes barreling down the hallway with Lena following behind him at a much slower pace. Kara and Alex look up from their briefing for the mission.

“We finished it! We should be able to find Cadmus now!” Winn says, holding something that looks a little like a radar gun in his hands.

“That’s the alien detection device?” Alex asks as Winn hands it off to Kara.

Lena nods. “Modified to target Cyborg Superman’s particular strand of DNA – we collected some blood off the clothes J’onn was wearing on Thanksgiving last year. All Kara has to do is fly up high enough and point it down. It should do a full sweep of the city.”

Kara exhales. “Okay. This is it, then. Is the NCPD ready?”

“Maggie’s on standby with a task force,” Alex answers.

Winn taps away on his phone. “James is ready to go, too.”

“And is J’onn still coming?”

Alex makes a frustrated noise. “He won’t listen to reason. Mon-El is staying clear of it in the bar with M’gann, but J’onn insists he won’t join them. We’ll just have to watch out for him.”

“Okay,” Kara says again. “Okay, I’ll go try the scan then.” She presses a kiss to Lena’s cheek and makes to leave before Lena stops her.

“Be careful,” she says urgently, gripping her hand tight.

Kara smiles reassuringly. “When have I ever not been?” she jokes. Lena rolls her eyes.

“I can think of a time or two,” she mutters.

-

The fight lasts for what feels like a minute, but is really closer to fifteen or twenty.

There are three superpowered humans on Cadmus’s side, and only Kara and J’onn on theirs.

Henshaw and the other superpowered human, manning a Medusa gun, focus largely on J’onn and Kara, while Jeremiah tries to stop James and the officers and agents from destroying the equipment around the room.

Once, a shot from the Medusa gun misses J’onn only by a hair, so close that his side glows red as the ray shoots past him, and Kara’s heart stops. She drops what she’s doing and dives for the man holding it, tackling him to the ground as the gun skitters away.

The ear-splitting sound of splintering metal and glass makes everyone in the room freeze, and they all look up as Henshaw begins to scream in agony, clutching his face where a bullet has buried itself behind where his mechanical eye had been. Jeremiah is the first to move, his head swiveling to locate the person who made the shot, and Kara sees the exact moment he locks onto Maggie, whose gun is still raised in Henshaw’s direction. He moves as if to charge at her.

“No!” Alex yells. Jeremiah looks up at her, distracted for a fraction of a second, and that’s when J’onn shoots him with the Medusa gun.

For the second time, everyone in the room stops what they’re doing to watch what happens. Jeremiah falls to the ground, coughing, and his skin flushes red. He looks feverish, but he struggles back up to his feet, bent over his knees. Kara makes eye contact with J’onn, before she grabs the man she’d been fighting, holding him still as J’onn shoots him, and then Henshaw, still preoccupied with his eye.

“Dad!” Alex runs across the room, making her way over to Jeremiah, her gun going slack in her arms.

Jeremiah looks up when Alex calls to him, staring at her, then at Maggie, and, finally, with one last look at Kara, he shoots up through the roof, flying out of sight.

-

Lucy makes her way down to National City to visit, and Kara figures it’s as good a time as any to have an end-of-summer celebratory get together.

There are no flying pods crashing into Earth this time around, but their little group has grown since then: M’gann arrives with J’onn and Mon-El, bearing alien champagne, and Lena comes over after work with Maggie in tow, carrying her own bottles of champagne.

When Lucy appears at her door, Kara nearly crushes her in her arms before James saves her, and now Kara’s apartment is filled with the people she loves.

Kara sets out a mountain of food and drinks. Most of it is for her, Mon-El, J’onn, and M’gann, but the amount of food spread out in the apartment is still impressive: there’s take-out from all across the city and a tray of potstickers in every corner of the apartment and, at the very end of her kitchen island, pasta from Italy, Mai Tais from Hawaii, and take-out from a little-known food truck in Chicago.

Lena gives Kara a curious glance as Alex descends on the latter, but Kara only smiles.

As she’s making her way around the room, piling food onto a plate, Kara notices Winn talking quietly with Lena and Alex. She only catches one or two words—Winn says something about his father—before she tunes out to give them some privacy.

After eating, they pop the champagne bottles, cheering as corks fly around the room. Mon-El insists on pouring everyone’s drinks, trying out a trick M’gann showed him, and by the time each of them has a flute of champagne in hand, they’re all grinning and the room is bright and warm for their laughter. They sober a little when no one steps up to make a toast.

Lena clears her throat. “To saving the aliens of Earth from Cadmus,” she says. Everyone in the room lets out an almost imperceptible sigh.

“To Lucy, and all the hard work she's put into the DEO,” J’onn says. Lucy smiles at him.

“To family,” Alex says quietly, echoing the words Kara said last year. Maggie pulls her into her side.

“To family.”

-

“Kara! What are you doing here? We’re still meeting to have dinner with Maggie and Alex later, aren’t we?”

Kara steps inside from Lena’s office balcony and Lena greets her with a brief kiss. Her earrings glint softly in the light cast by the lamps in the room. “Yeah, we are. I just came by to give you something.”

“What is it?”

“I know I forget to check my phone a lot,” Kara begins, “especially when I’m out being Supergirl, so I thought you should have a different way to call me if you ever really need me.” She slips a watch out of the pocket in her skirt and holds it out, dangling from her fingers. “Can I?” she says, gesturing to Lena’s wrist. She nods.

“Call you?” Lena asks once Kara finishes fastening the straps, looking down at the watch curiously.

Kara nods. “Try running a finger over the watch face. Winn made it.”

Lena does, and gasps, watching as the symbol on Kara’s suit materializes on the face of the watch and a button appears next to the crown. “Kara, I can’t accept this. I don’t—”

“Zor-El.” Lena looks up at her. “My name is Kara Zor-El. That’s what this means. The symbol on my chest is the symbol of my family.” She takes a deep breath. “It means  _El mayarah_.” Kara’s tongue curls reverently around each syllable; she forgets when she said them last. “‘Stronger together’. It’s the symbol,” she says proudly, “of the House of El.”

“‘El’?” Lena repeats.

Kara smiles, nodding. She casts her eyes away, looks all around the office, before her gaze falls on Lena again. “Funny, don’t you think?”

She smiles again in the wake of Lena’s stunned silence, flying out the way she came, blasting off the balcony and away from the L-Corp building.

-

Lena looks at Kara across the table with her eyebrow raised, the shrimp between her chopsticks pausing on its way to her mouth. A waiter bustles past them, carrying plates of potstickers and platters of noodles, shouting something to a cook in the kitchen. Lena watches him go, distracted.

After a while, her gaze falls back on Kara. Lena looks down at her shrimp—legless—before looking back up at Kara again. “Is there something on my—”

“Will you have Thanksgiving dinner with us next week?” Kara asks suddenly.

Lena starts. “Thanksgiving? With your foster mother? Are you—” Lena hesitates, “—are you sure I’m welcome?”

“Of course you’re welcome!” Kara says. “Eliza hasn’t stopped bugging me about meeting you—fair warning, she still talks about how fast you were able to anaesthetize the virus last Thanksgiving—and Alex and Maggie will be there, too.” Her voice goes hushed. “No sign of Jeremiah yet. But I think the whole game night crowd is coming!”

Lena laughs at her excitement. “Well, as long as Supergirl will always be there to save me if things go badly,” she says playfully.

“She will be! But don’t be silly, Eliza’s going to love you.” Kara grabs Lena’s hands, pressing in close, and looks down at her, her eyes wide and shiny. “So you’ll come?”

“I ...” Lena’s throat bobs, and Kara listens to her heart flutter for a beat. “Yes, of course.”

Kara breaks out into a grin that makes the muscles in her face strain. She lifts their hands, pressing Lena’s knuckles to her lips and, from over the delicate arch of her wrist, Kara catches Lena smiling warmly at her, her eyes lighting up and crinkling at the corners.

The sun shines down on them in the centre of the room through the windows behind Lena; the light makes her glow prettily, softening her every edge, and Kara thinks she looks beautiful.

-

The day is almost over by the time the jury finally makes its decision, and Lillian Luthor is found guilty for the majority of the charges against her.

It’s a Friday evening, and Kara, along with half the press in National City, watches as the judge announces Lillian will spend the rest of her life behind bars, and she’s sent to a prison facility south of Central City, hundreds of miles away from the prison where Lex is carrying out his life sentences.

Lena is sitting in an aisle seat, a bubble of space around her that no one crosses, and while Lillian loses her composure for the first time since Kara’s known her, screaming and cursing everyone,  _everyone_  in the room, Lena slips silently away from the courtroom, unnoticed in the commotion.

They don’t talk about it.

Kara finds Lena in her office one night, sitting motionless on her couch, her head resting in her hands.

“Lena,” Kara says, rushing over to her. “Lena, what’s wrong?”

Lena jumps only a little, lifting her head to look at Kara. Her lips are dark against her skin, face pale and drawn, and Kara thinks again of how this is how she imagines Lena: a few hairs out of place, her makeup rubbed away in places, and often, so very often, with sadness curving her shoulders.

“Kara,” she says, her voice small and uncertain. “It’s—it’s nothing.” She looks away, her elbow coming up to rest on top of the couch, her hand covering her mouth, as the other falls into her lap, trembling. Kara kneels in front of her and takes it, stilling it in both of hers. She waits. And, after a while, Lena speaks.

“How do you—” Her voice breaks, and she takes a deep breath, closing her eyes and concentrating for a moment, squeezing Kara’s hand hard. ”Don’t you ever think about the other Earth?” Kara falters for only a split second.

“I do, of course I do,” Kara replies, wide-eyed and earnest. “I’m not sure I’ll ever stop thinking about it.” Lena looks down. “But then I think of this Earth, and the people on it.” She smiles. “I think of Alex, and how perfectly we came together. I think of you,” Kara says, watching their hands, marveling at every muscle movement, the rush of blood in their veins, the feeling of Lena’s skin under her fingers, “and the balance we’ve found here. The happiness. That has to mean something, doesn’t it?”

Lena is watching their hands, too. She doesn’t answer for a moment, before she looks up and her lips quirk tiredly. “It’s easy to think that when you don’t know what life could have been like, don’t you think?”

Kara’s nose scrunches up, and her smile widens as laughter begins to trickle out of her mouth, softly at first, then louder and louder, until the both of them are fit to burst, Lena pressing a hand to her side as Kara buries her head in Lena’s stomach, the both of them nearly in tears. Between them, their hands are still clasped, and Kara hardly notices the weight of the emblem on her chest.

“Yeah,” she says between bouts of laughter, “I think you’re right.”


End file.
